


seeking arcadia

by cosmicwoosan



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Chronic Illness, Cynicism, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Fae & Fairies, Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Love, Fluff, Heavy Angst, Hospitals, M/M, Making Out, Medical Inaccuracies, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Death, Pulmonary Fibrosis, References to Depression, Suicidal Thoughts, Terminal Illnesses, body image issues, implied handjobs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-13 02:09:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 58,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21486583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicwoosan/pseuds/cosmicwoosan
Summary: San is one who believes in second chances; it’s just that he’s too far gone to get his. His lungs are practically turning to stone, and without an oxygen tank and a tube in his nose, he may as well be dead on the floor.One fateful night, he meets Wooyoung, a mysterious boy with a strange affinity for nature, whose world is a little more than supernatural. It'smagical.But even magic has its limits. San learns this the hard way.
Relationships: Choi San/Jung Wooyoung
Comments: 38
Kudos: 292





	1. daffodil

**Author's Note:**

> helllooo welcome to a new fic! more lovely angst because that's all i know how to write :')
> 
> just to let you all know, this fic is definitely going to contain inaccurate depictions of illness. i apologize if any of it comes off as offensive or ignorant. i try to do research, though some of it may be exaggerated for the sake of the fic and all. hope that'll be okay.
> 
> (also yes i have changed the summary like twice already ajdfhlsahfjd sorry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloooo and welcome to my new fic! Please excuse any medical inaccuracies; there will be plenty of them <3

San is one who believes in second chances. It’s just that he’s too far gone to get his. Not only that, but the universe seems to hate him so much that he never even got one as an option. Still, he’s grateful to his parents that they were willing to grant him his wish of attending university, even though there’s really no need to go when you’re dying.

When the doctors told him his disease was “terminal,” they added on saying that it was “treatable” and he could “live with it” if he continued treatment and if the treatment was successful, but both statements contradict the notion of his disease being “terminal,” so San didn’t really know what to believe. With a little more research, he discovered that his condition is considered both “chronic” and “terminal” because it only gets worse over time, more people die from it than not, and he also came to the conclusion that the doctors were a bunch of fucking idiots.

He constantly asked how and why he had this disease, but no one gave him a definitive answer. The doctors were torn between it being genetic, autoimmune, or just for no apparent reason, like a wild chronic illness just decided to attack his lungs. He was told that his condition was rare for someone his age, but he liked to refer to himself as a “special case” because at least it implied he was special (the doctors didn’t appreciate this false-hopeful kind of attitude, but it kept him sane).

The doctors weren’t telling him anything, so he just assumes that God or whoever created his body hated him, and decided to fuck over his immune system or maybe poison his lungs when he was in the womb or something. Not his parents though, he loves his parents.

They constantly told him it couldn’t be idiopathic because he was so young, and San wanted to tell them that they’re a bunch of idio-pathetic idiots for not being able to figure this shit out when it’s their _job. _They kept on saying that it’s autoimmune, it _has _to be autoimmune, but at some point San just gave up on trying to figure it out.

Besides, who has time to question everything when your entire body feels like shit? Certainly not San.

He took whatever medication was given to him, went to any treatments that the doctors suggested, did _anything _that was supposed to help him live a longer and healthier life with an incurable disease, but even though the disease was centered in his lungs, he felt empty everywhere. If the disease was autoimmune, he hoped that it would just attack the rest of his body so it could be over with.

There are some days where he feels alright, though. If he eats healthy and gets enough sleep and drinks enough water, he can go a day without his body wanting to collapse underneath him. If he can go two days in a row feeling like that, it feels like he can do anything. If he can go three days, he considers it an actual heaven-sent miracle.

Convincing his parents to let him go to university was… difficult, to say the least. San constantly pulled the “I’m dying” card, which is borderline sadistic in his mind, but it worked. San said that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his dying life cooped up in his bedroom, watching K-dramas and letting a machine do his breathing for him. He wanted to meet people, study hard, maybe even fall in love during the time he had left. It was hard to argue with that.

So now he stands at the door to his dorm room, with the key to it in one hand and the handle to his oxygen tank in the other.

He’d skipped orientation because being surrounded by that many people playing icebreakers and talking about teamwork and sportsmanship when he literally had to have a machine breathe for him was definitely not appealing. He’d toured the campus already, though his classes and their locations were arranged so that he didn’t have to walk as much. He just has to get through the toughest part of arriving to university: meeting his roommate.

Okay, maybe that isn’t the _toughest_ part upon arriving to university, but San doesn’t do well with social interactions especially when he’s hauling around an oxygen tank, so he’s pretty sure that’s the toughest part for him.

His parents had gone already, moved everything to his room for him while he waited in the car, so his roommate met his parents before he did. They’d said their goodbyes with tears in their eyes, begging San to call them if he ever needed anything, and while San was grateful, he just wanted to get in the room and lie down.

He must’ve made an amount of noise against the door, because before he even gets a chance to put the key into the lock, the door opens and he’s greeted by a tall, brown-haired boy with big eyes and a warm smile.

“You must be San!”

San stands there dumbfounded, thinking about how stupid he must look with a tube in his nose and a huge ass oxygen tank by his side, holding out a key when the door was already unlocked.

“Y-yeah.”

San’s roommate steps aside and holds the door open for him, giving him enough space to drag his stupid oxygen tank into the room. “Nice to meet you, San. I’m Yunho.” He reaches out for his hand to shake.

“Ah…” San glances down at it hesitantly.

“Oh shit, um, sorry.” Yunho retracts his hand immediately, opting for scratching at his head awkwardly instead. “I should’ve, um, yeah. Your parents told me about your condition, but I’m still kinda trying to wrap my head around it, if that makes sense.”

“It’s fine,” San says.

He’s quite used to it. He’s pretty sure he’s experienced all the limitations that come with his disease, from the physical to the social, and this whole awkward not-being-able-to-shake-hands-with-his-roommate-because-he-can’t-risk-any-kind-of-infection thing has definitely happened before. While it sucks, it doesn’t make him sad or angry or anything. It’s just a thing that happens. He has thick skin; he’s handled much worse than an awkward not-handshake.

“So, yeah, um, make yourself at home, I guess. I just gotta unpack a couple more things and then I’ll be all set to hang out or chat or whatever you want,” Yunho says.

“Okay.” San takes a seat on the twin-sized bed, covered in freshly washed sheets and garnished with an abundance of unnecessary pillows (“We just want you to be comfortable!” his mother insisted). Moving his tank to the side of the bed, he shifts into a lying position and breathes.

“So,” Yunho says as he’s transferring clothes over to the drawer, “what’s your major?”

Ah, the small talk. San likes small talk, if he’s being honest. He’s had plenty of it with the nurses and doctors when he’d stayed at the emergency room a multitude of times. It’s awkward, but it’s a great way to get to know people. San likes getting to know people since he knows he doesn’t have a lot of time left to do so. He tries to cherish small moments like those.

“Literature. I like reading and writing and stuff,” San says. “Plus, it’s a pretty easy major for someone like me. Dying really gives you a lot of insight into things.”

“Well, shit,” Yunho half-laugh, half-says. “You’re one of the morbid dying people, eh?”

“Yup,” San answers dramatically. “Really, feel free to make jokes about my chronic illness. I’m not even being sarcastic. Life’s too short, literally, for me to give a shit. If I’m dying, I’d rather have a laugh about it.”

Yunho chuckles. “You’re insane, man. I like it.”

“That’s what chronic illness does to you.”

San’s doctors have always suggested going to therapy to “cope.” He’d always nod, saying, “I’ll consider it,” but when the doctors looked away he’d roll his eyes, thinking that going to therapy to cope with dying isn’t going to solve shit. He’s dying. He’s accepted it, and he doesn’t need to “cope.”

Laughter is his best medicine, besides, well, actual medicine and his oxygen tank. It helps him feel a little better, though he tries not to laugh too hard for obvious reasons. Sometimes it helps him feel like he’s not dying, that he’s normal and can enjoy life just like any other human being who’s not dying can. Perhaps it’s why he makes all these cynical, situationally inappropriate jokes that doctors see as concerning rather than lighthearted. San finds all of it amusing.

Chronic illness really does make one insane, San thinks.

“What about you? What’s your major?” he asks.

“Sports medicine,” Yunho answers. San snorts with laughter. “Ironic that I end up with a roommate like you, huh?”

“I was thinking the exact same thing,” San says.

He has a feeling he’ll get along with his roommate just fine if his roommate doesn’t mind dry coughing at ungodly hours of the night and having to look after someone who could drop dead at any moment if his body decides it’s time to go.

“So, like, you don’t have to talk about it, but what kind of stuff do you experience? I want to be able to help you out if you need it,” Yunho says, the mood suddenly turning somber.

San sighs. He knew that this question was going to come up one way or another. He’s not one of those sick people who hates it when people try to help him out just because he’s sick. If anything, he’s kind of grateful for those people. He just doesn’t want Yunho to overdo it and treat him like he’s made of glass.

The scar tissue in his lungs definitely prove otherwise.

“My lungs are basically turning to stone, so it’s a lot of dry coughing, not being able to breathe, fatigue, aching, that kind of stuff,” San explains. “I don’t really need ‘help’ per se, but I just want to warn you, I might wake you up in the middle of the night with my coughing. If you need to leave and sleep somewhere else, I completely understand.”

“I understand,” Yunho says. “Well, I don’t, since I don’t have what you have, but I get what you mean. I know you said you don’t really need help, but if you need me to walk you to a class or get something for you, just let me know, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Besides, as university students, I feel like neither of us will be getting that much sleep anyway.”

San can’t agree more.

After Yunho finishes packing away the rest of his clothes, he plops down on his bed, bouncing slightly. “So, I was going to walk around campus. You’re welcome to come with me, but if you’re not up for it, that’s fine.”

Okay, maybe it _is _a little frustrating when people treat San like he can’t do anything. He sits up and swings his legs over the bed, sighing. “Of course I’m up for it, but I won’t be able to go very far. One of the campus’s cafés is near here, right? We could go there, have a chat and stuff.”

Yunho smiles, big and bright as he stands up again. “Yeah! Um, do you need help?”

Scoffing, San stands up and grabs the handle of his oxygen tank. “No, but one of the perks of walking around with a guy who has an oxygen tank: you get to take the elevator wherever you go.”

Yunho rolls his eyes.

❀

Getting to the café isn’t much of a challenge. It’s just annoying, especially when a bunch of people passing by all stare at the one guy lugging around an oxygen tank with a tube up his nose. So far, San hasn’t seen anybody else like him, apart from someone he saw in an automated wheelchair, but at least that person didn’t need a machine to breathe for them. Still, it’s nice seeing that he’s not the only physically ailed student prowling around.

Waiting in line at the café is a little more frustrating. There’s this one guy who tries to step around San’s oxygen tank, obviously attempting to cut in front of him, when Yunho reaches out to grab the guys arm and tells him to fuck off (well, politely). The guy scowls at the both of them but does so anyway, returning to the back of the line.

“Aish, shouldn’t people have a decent sense of common courtesy by now?” Yunho mutters to himself.

The barista is a tall, lanky kid by the name of Mingi, who greets San and Yunho with a jolly, crooked smile. His eyes disappear with his smile, and San thinks it’s kind of cute. “What can I get for you today?” he chirps cheerfully.

San orders a yogurt smoothie since his mother forbids him from drinking coffee for his health, though he doesn’t see the harm in it. He asks Yunho to order one so he can take a few sips, to which Yunho obliges, winking at him before he orders a large caramel iced coffee.

“So,” Yunho says as the two sit down at a table near the windows, “what’s your condition called?”

“Pulmonary fibrosis,” San says, sipping his smoothie. “It’s where your lungs constantly scar over.”

“Do you know what caused it?”

San shrugs. “Don’t know, and the doctors never really gave me a definitive answer. Apparently there are a lot of environmental factors that go into it, but I’ve never been exposed to harsh chemicals or asbestos or anything like that. And like, I’ve never had any sort of other disease like pneumonia that could’ve caused it. So yeah, I don’t know.”

“Could it be an autoimmune issue?” Right, Yunho is a sports medicine major. He’s bound to know a thing or two about diseases.

“Maybe,” San says. “But even so, they haven’t really given me a diagnosis other than the pulmonary fibrosis, so that’s all I have to go off of.”

“That’s bullshit,” Yunho says as he rolls his eyes. “But if there really is no definitive cause, maybe it is idiopathic.”

“They’re just confused as to why it would be since I’m so young and haven’t had any sort of risk factors. From what my parents know, it’s not genetic. I was a healthy child for the most part. It’s just like my lungs just decided to fuck me over out of nowhere.”

“That really sucks, man. I’m sorry.” Yunho smiles sympathetically, offering a sip of his coffee to him, which he gladly takes.

“It’s whatever, honestly. I could get a lung transplant or something, but I’ve accepted my fate at this point.”

That makes Yunho frown around his straw, his brows furrowing together. “Come on, man. If getting a lung transplant could save your life, I’d get one.”

“Pretty sure all the treatments I get nowadays are enough on my parents’ wallets.”

“But if you get the transplant, then you wouldn’t have to get any more treatments, right?”

San shrugs. “There’s no guarantee. For all I know, my body could completely reject a new pair of lungs. Plus, I’d definitely be put on a waiting list, and that would probably take a while.”

Yunho sighs, face deflating in defeat. “Well, it’s your decision, I guess.”

“Trust me, we’ve discussed all sorts of options. The doctors don’t really like my morbidly cynical way of thinking when it comes to my condition, but it gets me by and gives me a good laugh sometimes. I promise you, you can make all the jokes about my illness and I will not give a shit," San says with a laugh, followed by a tiny cough.

"I'll keep that in mind, but if someone calls you a cripple or whatever, they're getting their ass whooped," Yunho says firmly.

Through the small talk, San learns the most basic things about Yunho, from his birthday (March twenty-third) to his hobbies (dancing, watching animal videos on the Internet, and playing basketball), and San can't help but feel a bit inferior. Yunho speaks loud and proud about his interests, about himself, and San understands why. Yunho is somebody. He makes his life worth it, and he _can, _because he has all the time in the world. San can't say the same about himself, as he's spent the majority of his life in the hospital being treated or checked up on and at home in his room, eyes glued to his laptop screen as he did his online coursework. His life is so, so boring.

And when Yunho asks about him, he just shrugs. "I'm not that interesting. I have sucky lungs and that's about the most interesting thing about me."

"You definitely don't seem boring, that's for sure," Yunho says. "Tell me more about your condition, though, if that's what makes you interesting. If you're comfortable talking about it, that is."

"Yeah, I'm fine with talking about it. What do you want to know exactly?"

"Hm... well, what were your treatments like?"

San clears his throat, sipping his smoothie to soothe the slight irritation. "A lot of routine check ups. Medication. I've taken so many pills I think my body is practically made up of chemicals at this point." Yunho laughs at that. "Oxygen therapy, which is like, what I've got going on right now." San points at his oxygen tank and the cannula in his nose. "And breathing exercises. All of this is supposed to slow the progression of the scarring or make the disease more bearable."

"Is it doing that?" Yunho asks.

"Yeah, for the most part," San says. "It's been a while since I've had a bad episode."

"Mind if I ask what happened?"

"I couldn't stop coughing, started coughing up blood, and I'm pretty sure I passed out. Don't remember much from that besides waking up and feeling like I just came back from the dead. Who knows, I might have actually. I don't know."

"Well, shit, how long ago was that?" Yunho asks.

"Several months ago," San says. "I was feeling better within two weeks. Haven't had any complications since then."

"That's good, at least. Hopefully that doesn't happen again. I don't want my roommate dying on me; I've come to like you quite a bit," Yunho says with a bright smile.

San decides he likes Yunho. He'll just feel bad if Yunho loses sleep over him. He's pretty sure he's kept his own parents up with his coughing before (actually, he's _very _sure he has). But he has to remind himself, they're his parents. This is Yunho, someone San has only just met but already likes. Being shut away at home meant San didn't get many opportunities to make friends, and now that he's in a completely different environment with all sorts of opportunities like that and more, he's ready to take advantage of all of it. He just hopes he doesn't scare away his roommate (and hopefully soon to be friend) in the process.

But then again, what does a dying man have to lose?

❀

At the very core of the university is a bountiful courtyard, adorned by an enormous fountain and an abundance of healthy, vibrant plant life. The red brick walkways from all directions lead straight to the fountain, a two-tier stone statue that spouts water from both tiers. Several students sit along the rim of it, taking pictures and chatting amongst themselves. Some sit on the benches near the plant life. Most just walk by, but stop occasionally to take pictures of the scenery.

San does it too. The fountain is beautiful. He hasn't seen anything like it in real life.

"Isn't this place amazing? When I came here for orientation, I never wanted to leave this very spot," Yunho says, coming to a halt in front of the fountain.

"I didn't go to orientation. Didn't really think it was worth it," San says, eyes glancing down at his tank pitifully.

"Ah, I get that." Yunho sighs and stares up at the fountain, which is several centimeters taller than himself. "Do you mind taking a picture of me?"

"Not at all." Yunho hands San his phone and stands up on the rim of the fountain, balancing on one leg as he extends the other out behind him, spreading his arms out, one in front and one in back of him. San swears it's a yoga pose of some sort as he chuckles and takes the picture. "Nice, dude."

Laughing, Yunho hops down from the fountain and checks the photo. "Golden."

That's one word San would use to describe the scene. It's absolutely breathtaking (pun intended), and San is glad that he managed to convince his parents to let him come here. If he's going to die sooner than most, he'd rather have it be _after _seeing such beautiful things. He may not be able to travel the world with the time he has left, but he's perfectly content with seeing at least a fraction of it, here, in the courtyard of this university, in the form of a marvelous fountain and magnificent garden.

❀

San knows he shouldn't be pushing himself, but it's his first day at university and he wants to do fun stuff. He doesn't want to be tucked in bed at nine o'clock; he wants to be out at the student union and eating and meeting new people. The union is a bit of a walk from their dorm, but Yunho is perfectly willing to accompany him there and offers to help him out if he needs it. He also promises San that he will have emergency services on speed dial in case his body decides to fuck him over at some random point in time. San laughs at that, and coughs.

The student union is crowded with new students and booths filled with freebies and sign-ups. San and Yunho browse the booths, though San knows he probably won't be joining any clubs since that involves more walking and time out of his day. Yunho definitely takes an interest in one of the dance crews on campus and signs up for an audition.

"I want to see you dance someday," San tells him as they walk away from the booth.

"You probably will. I always dance if I'm listening to music. And not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm a pretty good dancer," Yunho says.

San wishes he could say the same, but he can't really do anything physical.

Among the sea of students, it's hard to stay focused. It's a little too cramped for San's liking, and as they approach the food court, he tugs at Yunho's sleeve and asks to sit down. Yunho looks at him worriedly. "Are you okay?" he asks.

"Yeah, just, not used to standing and walking for this long. And it's really crowded here," San says, his chest already beginning to tighten. "I just need to sit down for a while."

"Yeah, that's totally fine! Do you need me to help you?"

_Again with the help_. San shakes his head defiantly. "No, we're literally two feet away from the tables."

"Oh, right. Sorry," Yunho says, cringing visibly as they take their seats. "I didn't mean to, like, seem insensitive or anything like that."

San sighs and rests his elbow on the table, slotting his chin into his hand. "You weren't. I just, like, don't need help _all _the time. I guess I don't like being treated like I'm made of glass. My parents always spoiled the shit out of me and were always super protective, and for once, I can get away from all of that."

Yunho presses his lips together and nods. "I get it. I'm sorry about that."

"It's fine. I know you were just trying to help."

Yunho nods, though he still looks a bit uncomfortable. The two look around the large dining area, and San catches plenty of people looking at him before they hastily turn their heads. It's to be expected, honestly. But at least they look away. It must be an intriguing sight. It's not every day people see a college student carrying around an oxygen tank with tubes up his nostrils. San is the anomaly now. All eyes are on him (well, for a few seconds).

"So, uh, I should've told you this earlier, but I'm going to a party tonight. One of my old friends from high school is an upperclassman and he invited me to one. I don't... know if you'd wanna go."

San is already shaking his head. "Can't and don't want to go for obvious reasons," he says, chuckling.

"Yeah, I figured. Just thought I would ask. Are you just gonna hang out in the dorm while I'm out?"

"Yeah, most likely."

"Alright, well, if you need anything... oh, shit! We forgot to exchange numbers."

And after the exchanging of numbers, Yunho gets up to grab some food while San leans back in his chair, continuing to scout out the area, watching as heads turn away from looking at him and his stupid oxygen tank. It's disheartening, definitely, but he's sure they'll grow used to seeing the guy with crappy lungs who walks around carrying way too much baggage for someone with said crappy lungs. He's sure _he'll _grow used to this new environment, hopefully, as long as his oxygen tank continues to function correctly.

Yunho offers San some of his salad, which he graciously accepts, but San thinks to himself, _is this what's going to keep happening? _Mooching off of his roommate, always needing help but not wanting to ask for it? San has always been told that it's _okay _to ask for help when he needs it. But he doesn't want to hold Yunho back, doesn't want to keep Yunho up at late hours of the night with his dry coughing and wheezing, and certainly doesn't want to be more of a burden than his oxygen tank already is.

Yunho seems like a generous person. Even though it's just food, generosity tends to present itself in multiple ways. San has noticed this, from the doctors to his parents, always willing to lend him a helping hand no matter what, but San knows that if it weren't for his stupid illness, they wouldn't treat him that way. They'd treat him like someone who isn't sick and helpless. They wouldn't be at his side all the time, always checking up on him. He wonders if he weren't sick, if he would feel freer, not chained up by the symptoms of his disease and the people around him constantly shoving their pitiful affection down his throat. He would be able to party with Yunho, he'd be able to walk around freely without having to worry about collapsing, and he could live the life of a typical college student.

Unfortunately, that's not his reality. He accepts it, sure, but the tube up his nose and the puzzled stares from strangers make it more and more difficult to bear.

If Yunho decides to move out, he'll wholeheartedly understand why. But for now, taking small bites of Yunho's salad and smiling and laughing with him are the moments he'll have to cherish, because he's pretty damn sure it's not going to last.

❀

San ends up heading back to the dorm early despite Yunho's adamant protests, to which San tells him that he wants Yunho to explore the entirety of the campus without having a dude who can't breathe properly weigh him down. Yunho looks at him with puppy-like eyes that almost seem to shimmer, but San just sighs, shakes his head, and tells him to go. Reluctantly, Yunho obliges, but tells San that he probably won't be back until after the party. And yeah, San is fine with that. He's not Yunho's parent. He doesn't have any control over what Yunho does, and the last thing he wants is for Yunho to feel like he has to watch over him because he's sick. He _doesn't need help._

He takes the elevator back up to their dorm room, receiving a few glances from some of the people on their floor. He simply bows his head and walks straight past them, knowing that he'll probably never learn their names anyway, unlocks the room, and lets out a deep breath. He looks down at his tank and has the overwhelming urge to kick it, but, knowing that it wouldn't result in anything good, he settles for scowling at it.

"Why do you have to make things so difficult?" he huffs at nobody and nothing in particular. He could be talking to his tank. He could be talking to himself, or his illness, or God, for that matter. Whatever decided to fuck him over in the end and give him a shitty body and a shitty pair of lungs and a roommate and family that are too good for him. He's not worth all the worry, all the pity. If it weren't for his stupid illness.

Unsurprisingly, San receives a phone call from his mother that evening. Most of her worries are about what he ate, if his tank is functioning correctly. She tells him that she's already scheduled appointments with the clinic nearby for routine checkups (and okay, he's grateful for that because he's pretty sure he would have absolutely no idea what to do or where to go for his checkups and he kind of needs those). She rambles on like she normally does, telling San to take his medication, eat and drink regularly, don't go anywhere unless he has to, to which he responds with a simple hum and nod of the head that she can't even see, but she doesn't stop talking until she's run through everything. San can probably recite all the things his mother tells him on a constant basis and create an extensive list of them.

"Please take care of yourself, Sannie, and make sure to call us if you ever need anything, okay?" she asks, her voice filled with a typical mother's worry.

"I will," San says, though he means it halfheartedly.

He's the one to hang up, because he knows his mother won't. Part of him feels bad. The other part is just glad she can't hear him now because he sighs, falls back on his bed, and coughs.

He coughs a lot, actually.

The coughing fits aren't _bad, _usually. They sound concerning, as they're heavy and loud, and there's always a weird taste in the back of his throat after he coughs. But they calm down after a few seconds, and as long as there isn't actual blood, everything is fine. He'll take a few deep breaths, or try to, swallow hard, and close his eyes. He's tired.

The sun is low in the sky when he drifts off to sleep to the sound of the dorm room's radiator and his patchy breathing.

❀

San is hungry when he wakes up. He should've eaten more than just a few bites of Yunho's salad. And now, he needs food, as his mother's voice screams at him in his head because that's all he ever hears.

He ends up traveling to the same café again, alone this time, because he actually quite liked their yogurt smoothie, and though he's hungry, he knows he probably won't be able to eat an entire meal despite his mother's pleas. He'll settle for a bagel or something.

It's dark out, and the café is practically empty apart from three students on their laptops and the staff. When San walks in, he recognizes the barista from earlier, removing his apron as he walks into the back room. San approaches the counter and frowns when he sees no one else there, but the barista is quick to turn on his heels and head back to the counter.

"Hello—oh wait! I remember you from earlier!" the barista, who San believes is named Mingi, says.

"Yeah, I was here earlier with my roommate," San says. "It's not hard to recognize me. I'm hauling around this oxygen tank for fuck's sake."

San can tell Mingi tries to hold back a laugh. "O-oh. Anyway, sorry that I almost left you there. My shift is literally about to end and one of my coworkers is grabbing stock and I don't know where the other one went..."

"It's okay," San tells him. "I just want another blueberry yogurt smoothie. You have any blueberry bagels?"

"You like blueberries?" Mingi asks, his lips curved into a smile, his eyes disappearing with it.

"Is it hard to tell?" San asks back, returning a smile.

Mingi just laughs and rings him out. "What's your name?" he asks.

"San. Choi San."

"Ah, like a mountain!"

"Yeah. A crappy mountain at that," San scoffs as he watches Mingi get started on his order. "A mountain that can't really stand without an oxygen tank."

"Nothing wrong with a little support," Mingi says with a shrug. He slices San's bagel in half and tosses it into the conveyor belt toaster oven.

_There's nothing wrong with needing help._

"Are you new here?"

"Yeah, just moved in today. I'm a first-year," San says.

"Ah. I'm a second-year," Mingi says, switching the blender on. "Got a job here last year, haven't left since. What's your major?"

"Literature," San shouts over the noise of the blender. "I like reading. Not being able to breathe or do much of anything gives me a lot of time to do so."

Mingi's laugh is inaudible, but his shoulders shake with it. "Damn, San, you really know how to crack a lot of self-deprecating jokes about your ailment."

San just shrugs as Mingi switches the blender off and starts pouring his smoothie into a cup. "It keeps me sane. No sense in not having fun with your terminal illness when life is literally too short. Figured I'll at least make myself and others laugh about it."

Mingi doesn't laugh at that. "Terminal?" He frowns, handing over San's smoothie.

"I mean, we all die eventually. Life itself is terminal. My illness is just gonna kill me sooner than most," San says, taking a sip.

"You're so nonchalant about it," Mingi says. "Not to mention I'm basically a complete stranger."

San shrugs again. "I guess you don't have much to lose when you're dying."

"Wow," Mingi says. "I, uh, don't really know what to say to that."

"Sorry if that was a little strong," San apologizes. "I know that my jokes can be a bit much for people, but I guess it's how I cope. I'm perfectly fine with talking about my impending death and the illness that will undeniably cause it, but I understand it's not an easy topic for others to talk about. Also, I just realized that I made another cynical comment about my illness. They tend to just slip out. I'm sorry again."

Mingi cracks a small smile. "It's okay. I've just never really met someone with... a terminal illness." He hands San's bagel over in a small basket.

"Strawberry cream cheese if you have it, please. Sorry, I forgot to mention that part," San says.

"I gotcha, don't worry." Mingi hands him two packs of the cream cheese and taps away at the register. "What are you doing after this?"

"Nothing, probably. I just wanted some food and I liked the smoothie earlier. Figured I'd come back, since it's not a far walk from the dorm and I probably couldn't eat a full meal. My roommate's going to a party, so I'm on my own for the night."

"Ah, well, after you pay, my shift ends. Would you like some company?" Mingi asks as San hands him his card.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I'd love to get to know you and your terminal illness," the barista says mischievously, as if he's just now caught onto San's sarcastic cynicism.

And who is San to turn down the opportunity to make a friend?

Over a yogurt smoothie and a blueberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese, San learns about Song Mingi, a second-year majoring in dance, who is actually a member of the dance crew that Yunho had signed up for. Mingi immediately perks up at the mention of it. "Really? That's such a coincidence! He's the one you were with earlier?"

"Yeah."

"I swear, we're really good, but not a lot of people come to this university to dance. We're a small group," Mingi says defeatedly. "But! Since we're a small group, we're really close-knit. They're like, my best friends. I'm looking forward to getting to know your roommate. What's his name again?"

"Yunho. Jeong Yunho."

"Ah. Yeah, I remember what he looks like! He's like, as tall as me! I don't see that many people my height," Mingi says, sitting up straighter as if to prove something.

San snorts. "What? I'm tall and I can dance. That's not a lot of people on campus, you know. I'd say I'm quite the minority, yet very unique and talented," Mingi says proudly.

"And arrogant, too."

"Confidence and arrogance are two different things, San-ssi," Mingi says mockingly, partially sticking his tongue out. "I'm just stating facts. I'm tall, I can dance. Not a lot of people on campus are tall, and there are barely any dance majors or people on the dance crew. Therefore, I am the minority, and please forgive me for thinking that I'm unique and talented. What am I supposed to say, that I suck? If we're going by the 'life is too short' motto, then I will say that life is too short for modesty. If you believe in your talents and abilities, say it loud and proud!"

San raises an eyebrow at the beaming barista, who's smiling wide, all crooked teeth and eyes that practically close when he does. "Whatever gets you by, Song Mingi-ssi."

Mingi bursts out laughing. "It does, honestly. Just like making self-deprecating jokes gets you by, boosting myself up and praising the things I do gets _me _by. Keeps me sane, you know?"

San nods, his lips pressing into a thin line. "Yup. I really do."

Mingi's smile fades into one of sympathy rather than triumph. "I'm sorry, San. I'll stop talking about myself."

"It's okay."

"So anyway, I told you that I'd love to get to know you and your terminal illness. Care to tell me about it?"

San gives him a rundown of his illness and a paraphrased version of his life story. Pulmonary fibrosis, possibly idiopathic or autoimmune (and unlike with Yunho, San has to explain what these things mean). How the oxygen tank makes breathing a little easier. How his life consists of routine checkups and medication and a (mostly) balanced diet and water. How his mother constantly bugs him about everything he's listed and how he wishes God hadn't fucked his body up.

"So... it really is terminal?" Mingi asks after everything, his voice small.

"Chronic, terminal, whatever. It's gonna kill me one day," San says. "There's no cure, and while there are things that can be done to slow the progression of the disease, the damage done to my lungs is irreversible. If something bad happens, like if I inhale some bad shit or get an infection, there's no going back."

Mingi sucks in his bottom lip. "Better stay away from all the smokers. Some people smoke on campus. Maybe it's best to stay inside when you can?"

"I guess."

"I'm surprised your parents let you come here. Your mom sounds uptight about all of this," Mingi notes.

"She is. It definitely took a lot of persuasion, but it's hard to argue with the 'I'm dying' card," San says with a sly smile.

"It must have been tough for her, though," Mingi says, suddenly serious. "Like... making that decision. University isn't exactly the safest place. People smoke, party and whatnot. There are a lot of ways you could get sick, always being surrounded by so many people. Not to mention it's a big campus and you have to walk everywhere."

"Believe it or not, light exercise is encouraged," San says. "My mother just likes to keep me inside for the other reasons. Doesn't want me inhaling anything bad or risk getting sick with something that could worsen the disease. But, like, I don't know. I just don't want to spend the rest of my already shortened life cooped up in my room."

"I can understand where you're coming from," Mingi acknowledges, nodding thoughtfully.

"The school is willing to give me the necessary accommodations. Like, if I can't go to class one day because I'm too sick or something, or if I miss anything, my professors are going to work with me online."

"That's good."

As good as things can get, San thinks.

San eventually gets Mingi's number before Mingi has to leave (being a barista is hard work and is very tiring, according to Mingi, and San believes him completely). Much like Yunho and his parents, Mingi tells San to call him if he needs anything. San smiles through the urge to cringe and thanks him, feeling both ecstatic that he made a friend and disappointed that it's another person in his life who will take pity on him.

Whatever. This is the life he's been given; he might as well just roll with it.

By now, the campus walkways are basically empty, to San's surprise. He'd expect more people to be walking around on the weekend nights before classes officially start, but he figures that maybe everyone is already partying. He sighs and walks in the direction of the campus's center, the brick walkways now illuminated by street lamps.

There are small spotlights at the base of the fountain that now highlight parts of the stone structure in a way that is almost hauntingly beautiful. San wonders if they keep the lights on all night. They better. Such a magnificent structure deserves to be highlighted like that.

San sits at one of the benches that faces the fountain and gazes up at it. The soothing sound of running water and the gentle summer breeze aids in quelling his aching lungs as he breathes in and out deeply, focusing on the air that's being pumped into his lungs. He's lightheaded.

He closes his eyes. He inhales through his nose and exhales through his mouth.

_Breathe. Just breathe._

If only it were that simple.

"Shit," San sighs, his shoulders slumping and head falling back. His eyes remain closed.

On the plus side, he's managed to make two friends on his first day. Well, people he _could _befriend. He likes them well enough. He imagines they must like him too, if they weren't scared away by his dark humor and cynical jokes about his own illness that will very well kill him one of these days. He wonders if he jokes like this to cope, or if he jokes like this because maybe it'll be easier to handle when his lungs finally decide to give up on him.

If he makes all of these jokes and downplays the severity of his illness, would people remember him in such a lighthearted manner, or would it not matter at all? Yunho and Mingi had laughed at a few of his self-inflicted jabs. Wouldn't that make his death easier on them?

He doesn't really know if it makes sense in his own head. He's trying to make it make sense.

He imagines death, for the dead or for the living, isn't easy no matter what. When his time comes, where he feels it in his bones that his body is going to finally give out, he's not sure if he will be able to keep up the sarcasm or the witty cynicism. He feels like he'd be too tired for that. Hell, he's too tired _now, _sitting on a bench in front of the school's gigantic fountain. If he meets another person, he's not sure if he'll be able to crack the same jokes.

He's just tired. He wants to be able to breathe properly.

When he finally opens his eyes and straightens out his head, he sees a figure in his left peripheral, about two meters away. It's leaning over one of the walls, cradling one of the many flowers planted on the sides of the walkways with both of its hands. A boy, San thinks.

And he's smiling.

San squints, attempting to acquire a better view of this person's face, when his smile suddenly disappears and his head turns towards San's. He tilts his head curiously. Startled, San's opens his mouth as if to speak, but nothing comes out.

It's a very, _very _strange experience. Where normally, in an instance like this, San feels like the breath would be knocked out of him.

But now, in this moment, seeing this stranger holding the head of a flower delicately in his hands, looking at him curiously...

Instead, San feels like a breath of the freshest air has invaded his lungs, and it's almost overwhelming. It has never been this easy to breathe.

"H-hi," he manages.

The stranger's smile returns, aimed at San instead of the flower. San takes another breath.

"Hi," the stranger responds, releasing the flower and standing to his feet. He's dressed in a simply purple hoodie and sweatpants, but San swears he's never seen someone so... ethereal. As he approaches, San breathes.

It's too easy to breathe. This isn't right.

"What's your name?" the stranger asks, now standing in front of him, blocking the fountain.

San would much rather stare at this beautiful stranger than the fountain, now.

"San. Choi... San."

The stranger beams at him and giggles, and San takes the easiest breath he's ever felt. It's as if the air around him is clean, like his lungs are lungs again. A gentle breeze floats by. The sound of trickling water streams through his eardrums. The stranger somehow grins even wider than before.

"Wooyoung. Jung Wooyoung." The mysterious stranger, _Wooyoung, _holds out his hand. "It's nice to meet you, Choi San."

Hesitantly, San reaches up and shakes the stranger's hand, forgetting about the whole "don't touch other people's hands unless they're clean" thing, because Wooyoung, one of the most beautiful people San swears he has ever seen in his life, is holding out his hand for him to shake. When their hands touch, San thinks he sees white for a split second.

He breathes. He can breathe.

Wooyoung shakes his hand tenderly, like it could break, but San feels indestructible. _He can breathe._

"It's a nice night, isn't it?"


	2. rose (lavender)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really need to work at my descriptions lol

It's a surreal experience, not being able to breathe properly for so long and then all of a sudden getting knocked in the lungs with puffs of fresh, rejuvenating air. To San, it almost hurts. It hurts so good.

"Y-yeah," San practically gasps, in awe both at his newfound ability to breathe and the gorgeous human being standing right in front of him.

When Wooyoung retracts his hand, San breathes again. "You seem a bit lonely. Mind if I join you?" Wooyoung asks, though he's already sliding into the spot next to San. "Oops, already did."

San giggles, _giggles, _and Wooyoung's face lights up instantly. San is pretty sure he hasn't looked away from Wooyoung _once. _He's absolutely infatuating.

"I, um... sorry," San says.

Wooyoung's nose scrunches up. "Why are you sorry?"

"I... don't know." San chuckles awkwardly, his eyes finally looking away out of sheer embarrassment. He can't help it. Though he can breathe, his entire body is jittery with nerves. "I'm just not good with meeting new people, I guess."

"That's okay," Wooyoung says. "It's not easy, especially being a new student and all. At least, I assume you're a new student."

"Yeah, I'm a first-year. And I was homeschooled my entire life, so this is definitely a change of pace," San says, glancing down hopelessly at his oxygen tank. Wooyoung's eyes follow his, and he tilts his head curiously. It's undeniably cute, San thinks.

"I'm the same way, though! First-year, homeschooled my whole life," Wooyoung announces with what seems like pride, though San doesn't exactly understand how anybody could be proud of that. Still, it gives him a tiny sense of relief, knowing that Wooyoung is in the same boat as him.

When San looks up back at Wooyoung, he's already staring back at him, that same wondrous smile on his face. San can't help but smile back. "What are your parents like?" Wooyoung asks suddenly.

The question takes San aback. "Oh, um... they're really great. They care a lot for me, with me being, uh, sick and all."

Wooyoung nods considerately, humming in acknowledgment. "That's good!"

"What about yours?"

"Oh, uh," Wooyoung says awkwardly, his nose scrunching up again. It's an adorable habit, it seems. "They're not really my 'parents.' They're... more like my guardians. I don't know who my real parents are."

"So you're adopted, then?" San asks.

"Kinda?" Wooyoung says, formed as more of a question. "This is gonna sound real weird, but I wasn't officially 'adopted.' I was just kinda, uh, found by these people. Randomly, in the middle of the night. In a basket by a train station."

San quirks an eyebrow, his jaw dropping slightly at the outrageous story. "A... basket?"

Wooyoung's entire face scrunches up this time as he shrugs, practically with his whole body. It's _too _adorable, San notes. "I honestly don't know. But, I was still able to get citizenship, even though I wasn't recognized as their child, since, uh, they're not... a 'couple.'" Wooyoung hushes his voice at that last part as he leans in. "They're not married or anything, 'cause it's not legal in this country yet."

San's mouth form an 'o' when he realizes what Wooyoung means. "It's hard to explain their relationship," Wooyoung continues, returning his voice to a normal volume. "When you see them, they look like best friends. Which, they are. But like, they also raised me, so when people see them, they think of me as their kid and think of them as my parents... which they aren't."

"I'm gonna admit, I'm pretty confused by all of that," San says.

"They're best friends who lived together for a long time, who stumbled upon a child in a basket and decided to raise it. So they're not _technically _parents. That's why I call them my guardians rather than my parents. They're not a couple," Wooyoung says, though he winks not-so-subtly.

San nods slowly, attempting to appear as if he comprehends what Wooyoung is telling him, though he really can't wrap his head around it. He figures it's not _that _big of a deal though. Whoever raised such an ethereal being deserves all the respect in the world, San thinks. Even if it was two males.

"We got a lot of weird looks from people," Wooyoung says. "Seeing two guys about the same age walking around with a kid, I mean, it's hard _not _to think of something strange. But it's okay. At least I didn't go to public school. I feel like _that _would've been hell."

San winces internally, nodding in agreement. "So, uh... a basket."

Wooyoung chuckles. "Yup. That's what they told me. At least whoever abandoned me had the courtesy to make it comfortable and actually kinda fancy. I mean, it's something straight out a movie. If they'd left me floating down a river, that's even _more _like a movie."

"You sure they didn't just adopt you in secret?" San questions.

Wooyoung shrugs again. "What does it matter? They raised me. I'm alive. The small details don't bother me. I wouldn't even make an effort to find out who my real parents are, if I'm being honest." He leans back on the bench, sighing as he tucks his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. "So, what do you like to do? Hobbies and such, I mean."

Here comes the small talk. San figures he should have expected it, especially entering a new place where he could make friends. It always starts with small talk, doesn't it? At least Wooyoung didn't ask about his oxygen tank first thing. That's not exactly small talk.

"I don't really have many hobbies," San says. "I like reading and writing sometimes. I watch a lot of dramas. There's, uh, not much I can do since I'm not exactly physically capable."

Wooyoung looks at his tank again and _pouts, _and all San can think is _how can this guy be so unintentionally cute? _"Do you like to explore?" he asks.

"I can't really, because—"

"Yes or no, San-ssi," Wooyoung interrupts, his tone firm yet facial expression soft.

"Um... yes."

When San thinks about it, he really does like to explore, when or if he can. He likes to see new places and the beauty in them; hell, he'd been mesmerized by a fucking fountain. Of course he likes to explore, and he would do much more exploration if it weren't for his tank weighing him down.

"I do like exploring," San continues, though with each word, he finds himself shrinking. "I just wish I could do it more, you know? I can't really walk that far without my lungs wanting to collapse, and I don't travel because it's too risky. Coming to university was a huge risk in and of itself, honestly. But I figured I might as well explore a _little _bit before I die."

Wooyoung frowns at San's cynical remark, unlike Yunho and Mingi. His frown comes with a pout, one that makes San feel sort of guilty for dumping another dark humorous joke on him. "I guess that's a good risk to take, but don't think of it like that."

"Like what?"

"That you're going to die."

"Well, I am," San says matter-of-factly. "This disease is slowly killing me, and there's no cure or way to reverse the damage that's done to my lungs. I'm not going to live as long as the average human does, and I've accepted it."

Wooyoung half-sighs half-whines and crosses his arms. _How is everything he does so adorable? _"You might be right, but why do you have to think of everything so negatively?" He even _says _things in pout. Lord help him.

"It gets me by," San says.

"Hmph."

With small talk comes interims of awkward silence, San has learned, but he usually takes these moments to catch his breath. However, given the fact that he's actually breathing with ease now, the silence is a lot more painfully awkward than he's used to. Wooyoung is the first person he's met (besides his doctors and parents) who hasn't liked his cynical jokes. It's _definitely _something San isn't used to.

While he doesn't want to scare Wooyoung off, he'll understand if he does. Besides, life is too short for him to be hung up on someone who's basically still a stranger.

(San definitely doesn't want him to remain a stranger for long, though.)

"Well, would it be such a bad thing if I asked you to go exploring sometime?" Wooyoung asks out of nowhere, and San can't help his eyes from widening.

"Wait, what?"

"I asked you if you wanted to go exploring sometime," Wooyoung repeats, chuckling.

"W-where, exactly?"

Wooyoung grins as he shrugs, eyes glistening with impishness, and says, "What's the point of exploring if you know where you're going?"

San is left speechless, but at least he can breathe.

The goodbye is as awkward as any goodbyes between two newly acquainted strangers are, but there's a lingering feeling in San's stomach as he walks away from the boy. His phone is heavy in his pocket with Wooyoung's number now stored in it.

San is halfway back to the dorm when the breathing returns to normal.

The same heavy, yet not painful breathing that his oxygen tank offers. The same difficult breathing that makes his chest hurt, though it's not intolerable. How he's _used to _breathing. It's not refreshing anymore. It's not the way he breathed when Wooyoung was there.

When he finally gets back to his room, he inhales deeply through the tube, and exhales through his mouth. He coughs.

And coughs.

He coughs as he drags his tank along with him to the side of his bed before collapsing onto it. He grips the edge of the bed as the coughs seize his body and wrack his lungs. There's a fire burning in the back of his throat, his chest, _everywhere. _He coughs until he feels numbly lightheaded and there's the weird metallic taste in the back of his mouth. His entire chest feels like it's been crushed, but it's nothing _new._

No, San has had it much worse. This is _normal._

When he finally manages to sit up and breathe properly (well, as properly as he can), he sighs in frustration.

He still has to get ready for bed.

❀

When San wakes up, Yunho isn't there. He figures he must have crashed at the party, or had gone home with somebody (which, good for him). The sun is low in the sky, he notices, and when he checks his phone, it's only seven in the morning.

It's still the weekend. Classes don't start for another two days. What else is he supposed to do?

It's seven in the morning. There's no way Mingi or Wooyoung would be up, he thinks. He figures he shouldn't even bother with them, but he does send Yunho a text asking him if he's alright and when he'll be back. It reminds him a lot of his own mother; maybe she's rubbed off on him.

He's pleasantly surprised that he didn't have a surprise coughing attack while he was sleeping. He just hopes that when Yunho is actually here with him, he won't wake either of them up with his coughing.

As San is getting dressed for the day (curse having a tube up his nose; it makes things so much more difficult), he receives a text who he thinks is Yunho at first, but when he checks the contact, it's actually Wooyoung.

**[Wooyoung]**

_sannie! u up for some exploring today?_

** [San] **

_right now?_

** [Wooyoung] **

_if u want! im already ready for the day. might go to the cafe, u know the one closest to the fountain?_

** [San] **

_oh yeah, that's the one near my dorm. i went there twice yesterday lol_

** [Wooyoung] **

_perfect! see u there :)_

San smiles at the texts, not even caring that Wooyoung didn't actually _ask _him to meet him there, nor did he agree to, but he would have said yes anyway. He's actually quite surprised that Wooyoung is up this early. He wonders if Mingi is too. He briefly considers leaving Yunho a note telling him he went out, but frowns at himself when he realizes he has a cell phone and can just text him that.

San sometimes doesn't understand why he thinks things.

Sure enough, the streets and walkways are practically deserted, but in a way, it makes the campus much more attractive, when there are no human bodies in the way of its beauty. There's a lot more plant life that San had noticed before, towering trees and bushels of flowers of all sorts of colors lining the sidewalks. The intense morning sunlight only adds to the natural beauty, illuminating all of the colors that paint the campus and make it something that San is glad he got to see.

If this is all the exploring he's capable of doing in his lifetime, he'll definitely take it.

The café isn't busy, but there are more customers than San thought there would be. He doesn't see Mingi behind the counter, but he does see a very familiar, gorgeous human being standing off to the right near the stools by the window.

"Oh, Sannie!" Wooyoung calls out, bounding over to San's side. "Glad you made it! I haven't actually been here before. You really came here twice yesterday?"

"Yeah, I went with my roommate during the day and by myself later that night," San says. "He was at a party, and I got bored at the dorm so I came out here since this is the only place close enough to the dorm where I can get stuff to eat."

"Does your dorm not have a dining hall?"

"What?"

Wooyoung bursts out laughing, some sort of hyena-sounding laugh that is both annoying and incredibly endearing. "Sannie, really? Your dorm doesn't have a dining hall? You know, where you can get stuff to eat?"

"I... don't know," San says, slightly embarrassed. "I didn't really explore that much yesterday. I mean, I came here, went to the student union to check out some clubs with my roommate, and then went back to the dorm. No one told me dorms had dining halls."

"Well, they do," Wooyoung laughs. "I knew that, and I don't even live in a dorm."

They start migrating towards the front counter behind two other customers, San's oxygen tank trailing behind them. "Where do you live?" San asks.

"With my guardians. They live in a house that's so close to campus that it might as well be on campus," Wooyoung says. "It's actually quite convenient. I'm able to walk everywhere with no problem _and _I don't have to pay for housing."

San scoffs. "Lucky you."

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Wooyoung says suddenly, frowning deeply. "I really didn't mean to, like, upset you or seem insensitive or anything like that—"

"Wooyoung, it's okay," San reassures him with a smile. "Don't worry about it. So, what do you want?"

Wooyoung looks up at the menu boards with his lips pursed in thought, and San can't help but admire him covertly. He tilts his head up as he pretends to read the menu, when his eyes are placed in a much different direction. He's even _more _beautiful up close and under lighting that isn't just street lamps. His jawline is so sharp that it could probably cut through metal, skin golden with a tan that's almost rare, and San swears he sees a bluish tint to his raven-colored hair and a bit of neutral-toned eyeshadow.

"I don't know, what's good here?" Wooyoung asks, turning back in San's direction. San swiftly averts his eyes and looks up at the menu, though he already knows what he'll have. Well, maybe he'll change it to strawberry this time.

"My mother doesn't like me having coffee. Says it's bad for my heart. So I just had a blueberry yogurt smoothie yesterday, which was really good. Though I might switch things up and go with strawberry this time," San says.

"Aw, what a shame. I like coffee."

"You can still get coffee," San laughs as the two take a step forward. "It's not like I can stop you. Yunho got a coffee yesterday."

"Yunho is your roommate?" Wooyoung assumes.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you his name."

"That's alright. Well, if that's the case, I might just have to go for a hazelnut coffee, though I might ask for a few sips of your smoothie."

San can't help it when his lips turn up into a smile. Wooyoung doesn't even have to _do _anything to make that happen. It's almost surreal. "That's perfectly okay with me."

After receiving their orders, they sit down at the stools that overlook the rest of the campus. The student union is visible from where they're sitting, though the core is a bit further down, past the union. San notices that there are actually flowers everywhere along the walkways, whether they're large bushes or just a few sprouts here and there. "The plant life on this campus is amazing," San thinks aloud.

"You think so?" Wooyoung asks.

"Yeah." San glances to his right, where Wooyoung is gazing out at the scenery with a dreamlike stance.

"I agree," Wooyoung says, sipping his coffee. "Whoever gardens the place deserves a raise."

"I saw you like, admiring a flower yesterday. You must like them a lot," San says.

"Oh, y-yeah," Wooyoung stutters slightly, though San doesn't think much of it. "I really, really like plants. And nature."

"Are you majoring in a science?"

Wooyoung shakes his head. "I'm undecided still, though that's probably going to be the route I go down. I have a... knack for anything nature-related. Plants, animals, you name it. If it has to do with the Earth, I'm there. What's your major?"

"Literature," San answers, amused that he's already had to explain this three times. "Since I didn't get out much, I spent a lot of time reading, writing, and watching dramas. I figured it would be a good fit for me. Don't know what I'd do with a degree in it, since... well, you know."

Wooyoung frowns slightly, though he nods. "I hate that you're so set on dying."

San sighs, biting down on his straw. "I... I guess you could say that I hate it too. As much as I joke about it, I don't think anybody wants to be set on dying."

"I was thinking about what you said last night, about how it gets you by," Wooyoung says, and San has to take a moment to think _Wooyoung was thinking about him last night. _"And I can understand where you're coming from, sort of. As someone who isn't dying, it's a little hard for me to understand how one could be so... cynical when it comes to life, but I guess I just have an overly positive outlook on things."

"Trust me, there's nothing wrong with that. If I could have a more positive outlook on things, I would," San says.

"Well, what's stopping you?"

"Dying."

"I should have expected that answer." Wooyoung smiles again, a lot more modestly this time, almost like he's... sad. "I wish you could live longer, Sannie."

For some reason, that sentence makes San's heart beat faster in his chest. He's sure that his parents, the doctors, hell, even Yunho and Mingi would say and think the same thing, but coming from Wooyoung...

Somehow, it _means _something.

Still, San finds his guard built up. "You don't know me that well," he mumbles. Because for all he knows, Wooyoung could get sick of him in the next few minutes. Where San could disappear, _die, _and he wouldn't even notice.

"Well, why do you think I'm here?" Wooyoung asks slyly.

And even though San has never been flirted with in his life, he's fairly certain this is flirting. It's giving him a weirdly uncomfortable yet giddy sensation in his stomach, but at the same time, he's never been so calm, so tranquil in his life. His lungs feel like they're actually lungs. Air enters and escapes them at a normal rate. His chest doesn't hurt.

How does Wooyoung manage to make him feel like this? Shouldn't he feel nervous? Gazing at Wooyoung for too long would probably make him go blind, since the boy shines brighter than any star that San has ever seen. But as much as San thinks he should feel something, he feels the opposite.

Peace. That's what he feels. His body feels calm, _normal, _and maybe even healthy.

"Anyway," Wooyoung says, "I told you I'd take you exploring today. So, get your oxygen tank ready because we're going to the woods!"

San chokes on his smoothie as he coughs, the pain returning to his chest but at a much lower magnitude. "W-what?" he splutters, still coughing as his lungs and brain catch up.

"Yeah! The campus is near some trails and I wanna take you down them." Wooyoung's mouth spreads into a wide smile, his eyes crinkling as he does.

"Wooyoung, that's really not a good idea. I don't know if there's like, pollen or anything that I could inhale that would cause my lungs to act up, and I certainly am not built for hikes."

"Don't worry about that, Sannie," Wooyoung says, his tone genuine as he gently places his hand over San's wrist. "We won't go far, and I promise there's nothing that will hurt you there. I've actually gone down the trails several times, but I want you to see them for yourself. If it ever starts to hurt or if it feels like too much, just let me know and we'll come back, okay?"

San doesn't know if Wooyoung has some sort of alluring drug perfume on him or something, but against his better judgement, he finds himself agreeing to follow Wooyoung. He's pretty sure he'd follow Wooyoung off of a cliff if it means he gets to breathe like this for the rest of his time alive.

❀

The walk to the woods ends up being all the way across campus, yet each single step actually feels like one instead of a thousand, which is definitely something San could get used to. The trek is definitely the most walking San has probably done ever, and it causes his lungs to ache in a much different way. He's panting by the time they reach the entrance to the woods, a small clearing where the trees part slightly, and Wooyoung stops in his tracks.

"You feeling okay?" he asks, though he doesn't sound too worried.

"Yeah, just, uh... not used to this amount of exercise," San wheezes as he hunches over, putting his hands on his knees and taking deep breaths through his mouth.

Wooyoung puts his hand on his shoulder and leans down. "It's okay, San. Take your time. I promise the walk won't be that long."

San nods silently, and once his breath finally returns, he looks up to see Wooyoung eyeing him tenderly, his lips curving into a tiny smile when their eyes meet. "You ready?" he asks.

"Yeah," San says, though he's still a little breathless from seeing Wooyoung up so close.

And what's more, Wooyoung takes him by the wrist and tugs him into the clearing. San drags his tank along, though with Wooyoung, he feels like he doesn't really need it.

Leaves and twigs crunch beneath their feet as they walk the trail, and San's oxygen tank occasionally catches on pebbles and sticks and whatever else litters the ground. He just prays it doesn't break as the trails seem to get smaller. They even walk up a few steps formed by rocks implanted into the ground that "aren't man-made," according to Wooyoung. San has to lift his tank up every time.

"You should get straps so you can wear it like a backpack instead of rolling it around," Wooyoung comments.

"I don't go out often enough to warrant that," San replies, chuckling.

"Well, now that you know me, you might wanna invest in that," Wooyoung says with a wink.

The trails almost seem to thin out into only a slim strip of dirt at one point. San doesn't know if the greens surrounding his feet are poison ivy or anything that could possibly cause him to break out. He's sort of glad he's wearing jeans, but in turn, he's also sweating. He hones in on the one trail of dirt and rocks and places one foot in front of the other, attempting to stay on track.

"Okay, so maybe I sort of lied to you earlier. I don't always follow the trail," Wooyoung says as he turns around to face San. "But don't worry, we won't get lost. I've been down this route many times."

"So... where exactly are we going?" San asks suspiciously, panting once again.

"A really beautiful place I stumbled across one day while I was exploring. I'm sure you'll like it. Come on." He grabs hold of San's wrist again and pulls him along, eventually turning right, off the trail and into patches of green. San watches his feet, how they almost seem to disappear beneath the plant life. He has absolutely no idea what kinds of plants these are, because he's never been through the woods like this.

He has to admit, though, as much as it's hard to breathe due to the amount of walking, it still feels like a breath of fresh air.

The trees begin to thicken the deeper they travel until eventually, they all seem to cramp together, one tree not even two inches away from another. The leaves are huddled so close together that they nearly block out the sunlight. Wooyoung is still holding onto San's wrist as he glances around, completely immersed in both fascination and fear. "Wooyoung, a-are you sure you know where you're going?"

"Completely sure," Wooyoung replies, not even looking back.

The trail has long disappeared, and the plants around him start to reach up to his calves. At this point, he's basically rolling his tank over the plants. He hopes he's not completely crushing them.

"Almost there," Wooyoung says, peeking over his shoulder. "You doing alright? Do you need a breather?"

"No, I'm fine," San reassures, though he's not entirely sure of himself.

About two minutes later, San sees a drastic change in color. The deep green from the grounded plants seems to fade into a lighter emerald that almost glistens in a majestic way. The trees are beginning to part as well, and San can see sunlight beginning to seep through. They come to another clearing, where two towering trees with enormous branches seem to form an arch, and two of their branches bend in such a way that their leaves form a curtain. Wooyoung halts at the leaf curtain and turns to San with a wide grin on his face.

"Are you ready?" Wooyoung asks.

San nods sheepishly, his grip tightening on the handle of his tank as Wooyoung takes his other hand in his and pushes past the curtain of leaves.

The sight is _magical._

The sun seems to hang over the oasis, but the amount of trees surrounding it suppresses the harsher rays, providing the perfect amount of light to emphasize the _real _work of art: a massive spring, surrounded by an array of lush plant life, ranging from vibrant-colored flowers to reeds to shrubs and bushes. When San looks down, he notices tiny blades of grass in the ground instead of solely dirt, which grow significantly the closer they are to the pool.

"Oh," San gasps, his neck straining from looking around so much.

He can _breathe._

"This... this is amazing, Wooyoung."

Wooyoung's fingers squeeze his hand as he smiles again. "Isn't it? Come on, let's get closer to the main attraction."

San is too lost in the beauty to register where Wooyoung is taking him. The earth dips slightly as they get closer to the spring. Lily pads float along the surface of the water. San can see tiny fish, orange and white, swimming happily, though he can't see the bottom of the spring for some reason.

"Is it deep?" San asks as he squats down, looking at his reflection in the water.

"It's deeper than you think, but you can still stand in it," Wooyoung tells him. "Come on, this way."

San stands up, his knees aching as he does so, and he drags his tank along with him as Wooyoung guides halfway around the pool. Hidden behind a shrub is a tiny wooden house, almost resembling a birdhouse, that sits upon a miniature tree with a thick trunk. It has no windows but it does have a front door, along with a sign next to it that reads "K.H. & P.S."

"What's that?" San asks, leaning down to examine it further.

There's a slight pause before Wooyoung answers, "It's a fairy house."

"A what?" San looks at him and raises an eyebrow.

Wooyoung shrugs. "My guess is that someone discovered this place and built it for the hell of it. It's fitting, though, isn't it? As silly as it might sound. Or... or maybe this person who built it actually believed in fairies and hoped one would live in it."

"Why didn't they build windows?" San asks, frowning.

"Beats me. Maybe they're microscopic," Wooyoung jokes, chuckling.

San stands up again, smiling as he does so when he suddenly hears a voice, an unfamiliar one, saying, "Wooyoung, it's good to see you again. What's—"

When he turns around, there's a _man, _a whole _person, _standing in the middle of the spring, the water barely reaching his collarbone. His eyes widen as he meets San's. "Who... who is that?" the stranger asks.

His voice is deep and rich, eyes big and intense. He's probably one of the most attractive people San's ever seen. There's a pink splotch right next to his left eye, his skin golden and sparkling beneath the sun. His hair is a light brown, wet from the spring.

"I, um," Wooyoung stammers, apprehensively looking between the two men. "San, this is... Yeosang."

San gawks at the beautiful man, who is eyeing him skeptically, it seems. "I come here often," Wooyoung says. "He's, um... here a lot."

"Was he the one who built the fairy house?" San asks, and Yeosang's eyes visibly widen.

"Wooyoung, what—"

"No! No, he's just here a lot. He and I are the only ones who know about this place. And, well, you now." Wooyoung laughs awkwardly.

"Yes..." Yeosang says somewhat doubtfully. "Wooyoung doesn't bring people here. Not everybody... knows about this place."

"Guess I'm special then," San quips. Nobody laughs.

Something is off. "So, Yeosang-ssi... what do you, um, do here?" San asks.

Yeosang tilts his head, brows knitting together. He looks... confused. "I just enjoy this place," he says, almost as if he's choosing his words carefully. "Sometimes... I like to wash away my troubles in this spring."

"Oh, do you live near here?"

Yeosang's expression is growing continuously wary, his frown deepening. "Not too far."

"Okay!" Wooyoung suddenly exclaims, clapping his hands. "I didn't expect Yeosang to be here, and I think Sannie's had enough exploring for today. We should head back, San. Yeosang... likes to be alone."

San frowns back at Yeosang, more out of confusion than anything else. His skin begins to crawl the more Yeosang's eyes narrow at him. "Y-yeah. We should head back," he concurs, and it takes what feels like forever for him to finally break eye contact with the mysterious man.

"Come on, Sannie. We can come back another time," Wooyoung says, taking San by the wrist again and leading him back to the clearing's entrance. He looks over his shoulder back at Yeosang, who hasn't moved from his spot in the pool, but whose focus remained on them the entire time. "I'll, uh, see you, Yeosang."

"Hm. Likewise, Wooyoung," Yeosang says.

"Let's go, San," Wooyoung ushers, pulling on San's arm with much more force.

When San looks back for the last time, just before the curtains close, he sees Yeosang's head disappear beneath the crystal-clear water.

❀

San's head is spinning when they finally make it back to campus.

Splotches are beginning to appear in the edges of his vision. He blinks, his eyes fluttering as he gasps for breath. He thinks he can vaguely hear Wooyoung's voice echoing in his eardrums before he stumbles over, though his body never lands.

He coughs. It hurts, but not as much as he's used to.

"Oh, god, San! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Wooyoung cries.

He blinks some more. His vision is blurry, but he's still breathing. "I shouldn't have pushed you so hard," Wooyoung says.

"It... it's okay," San says, closing his eyes again in an attempt to dispel the lightheadedness. "I just, uh... need to take a few deep breaths."

"Take your time."

San takes his time. He counts his seconds. He breathes in for five seconds. Holds it for three. Breathes out for five more seconds. Closes his eyes. Breathes. Tries to ignore the ache in his chest. Focuses on his breathing. Breathes some more.

There's a hand on his.

"San," Wooyoung says. His skin is warm, San notices. So, so warm.

He breathes again. And again.

Soon enough, he stops counting. He can breathe.

He breathes in for one. Doesn't hold. Breathes out for one.

"Wooyoung," San subconsciously replies.

"Are you okay?" Wooyoung asks, his fingers trembling slightly.

_Why are his fingers trembling?_

When San finally comes to, he realizes that one of Wooyoung's arms is slung around his shoulders, while his other hand is placed directly over San's, his fingers curled, _shaking. _Wooyoung had stopped him from collapsing onto the ground.

"Y-yeah," San stutters.

"Can you stand?"

Wooyoung's hand never lifts from his and he helps San to his feet. San doesn't topple over again. Instead, he breathes in as he stands tall and proud, and releases the breath through his mouth, feeling like he's just recovered from the deepest sleep. "You had me worried there," Wooyoung says.

"I've never... I've never moved so much in one day," San says. "I think I probably just exhausted myself."

"I'm really sorry," Wooyoung mumbles, eyes falling to the ground. "I didn't mean to push you so hard."

"No, please don't feel bad. I came out of my own free will," San says, smiling reassuringly.

Wooyoung sighs, his shaky fingers tightening around San's hand. "Come on, I'll walk you back to your dorm."

For once, San takes the lead and walks with Wooyoung back to his dorm, and despite the questioning looks from other wandering students, Wooyoung never lets go of San's hand.

San breathes the entire way there.

❀

When they finally get to San's room, San unlocks the door and Yunho is inside, clad in a plain white t-shirt and a pair of plaid pajama pants, belly down on his bed, seemingly asleep.

"That's your roommate, I assume," Wooyoung whispers.

San nods. "Yup. Looks like he's still recovering from the party. Well, at least he's back and alive."

Wooyoung giggles as San steps inside. "You can come in," San says.

Wooyoung still doesn't release San's hand as he tiptoes inside. Yunho snores softly as the two crowd into the compact room and settle on San's bed, and that's when Wooyoung finally lets go of San's hand.

"You should get some rest," Wooyoung says. San glances down at his fingers. They're still shaking.

"So should you," San says.

"I want to make sure you're okay first," Wooyoung counters.

San can't bring himself to look Wooyoung in the eyes. The boy is incredibly sweet and considerate, but San wonders if he's inadvertently _flirting _like this. Is Wooyoung inviting himself to... watch him sleep? Or something? San can't tell, but he's panicking. He's used to chest pain, dry heaving, coughing until he can't breathe, but he's not used to another human being possibly flirting with him and making his heart beat in an irregular way, one that isn't due to his chronic/terminal illness.

"I'll be okay," San says. "I'm gonna go right to sleep. Or, I'll try to, at least. Hopefully I don't wake up in a coughing fit."

Wooyoung frowns deeply at that. "San, it looks like Yunho isn't going to wake up anytime soon and I don't want you to be alone in case something happens. I'll... if you don't mind, I can, um, watch over you. Until you fall asleep, I mean."

And who is San to argue with that? A very, very attractive person being willing to _stay _with him? A very, very attractive person who San may or may not be attracted to?

It's so tempting, and in the end, San caves.

"Okay."

San scooches over to the side of the bed closest to the wall and shimmies beneath his covers. Wooyoung remains at the edge of the bed, posture erect and hands neatly folded in his lap. "Wooyoung... aren't you tired too?"

Wooyoung looks at him questioningly. "What?"

"I just... you can rest here too. For a little bit, I mean."

"San, I couldn't—"

"I _want _you to," San blurts. "Just... close your eyes for a few minutes. You seem really tired too."

Wooyoung sighs, but he slides up to the head of the bed and sinks down onto the other one of San's pillows. "Just a few minutes."

San nods. "Just a few minutes."

"Alright."

San doesn't know who falls asleep first, but when he wakes up, Wooyoung is gone. He wonders if Wooyoung even fell asleep in the first place, or if he spent the entire time watching over him, but he thinks, _does it really matter?_

When San breathes, it's normal. He's back to normal.

He glances over. Yunho is still unconscious on his bed, though he's rolled over to his side. At least he's alive.

San sighs, a tiny cough escaping his throat, when he notices something on his bedside table that wasn't there before.

A single stemless rose, colored a delicate pastel purple. San picks it up, but the petals disintegrate the moment he cradles it in his palm. He gasps as they basically evaporate into thin air, and while San doesn't know much about plants, he's pretty damn sure that doesn't happen in nature.

Bewildered, he falls back on his bed. He breathes, or tries to, and it's almost as if he can feel the remnants of the flower's petals looming over his head, but it's not threatening in any way.

In fact, he feels as if he's being guarded. Protected.

He's safe. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/galaxysangs)


	3. azalea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is actually harder to write than i anticipated but i guess it's because i'm not used to writing fluffy stuff lol

San's first checkup at the unfamiliar clinic is pretty standard. They weigh him, check his vitals. Ask him if he's been taking his medication. Examine his oxygen tank. San is used to it; his examinations back home consisted of a lot of questions, some breathing exercises, sometimes various imaging tests to see if there's been any changes (which, there usually aren't any; his lungs still look like shit). His first appointment here is a lot more of the technical stuff, paperwork and disease history and all sorts of information that San's had to spew plenty of times before.

For this appointment, the most that's done is his oxygen tank gets cleaned. He's sent off on his merry way with another appointment scheduled in three weeks.

Riding the bus back to campus is nerve-wracking, mostly because San isn't used to being in such a crowded space surrounded by people who could be disease-ridden for all he knows. Then again, he thinks he wouldn't necessarily mind dying early. Maybe this whole college experience will be the thing that finally kills him. Maybe all the weed and cigarette smoke will finally collapse his lungs. Maybe God will finally decide to rid the Earth of the abomination he created.

San sighs to himself silently as he hugs his oxygen tank, finding himself wishing that he had never been born in the first place.

❀

When classes begin, San is grateful to Wooyoung for telling him that there's a dining hall near the dorm because he's pretty sure he'd be late to all his classes if there wasn't one. His classes had been arranged in such a way that the building locations were close to his dorm so he wouldn't have to walk much. He isn't sure how his parents managed to finagle that, but it's certainly helpful, especially when San attends his first class and he's already trying not to dry heave as soon as he sits down. He drinks a lot of water and listens to his professors intently, eyes scanning each syllabus he gets and trying not to pay attention to the stares from his peers.

Two of his professors ask to speak with him once class is over. One of them tells San how brave he is, and that if he ever needs anything, to let her know. The other reassures San that he will not treat his students differently from each other, and that he will try to make San feel as comfortable as possible in his class. Ironically, both acts of "kindness" left San with an uneasy feeling creeping across his skin and a nasty first impression of those two professors. He knows they're trying. Everybody does.

Everybody tries hard for the dying.

Maybe that's why he likes Yunho and Mingi. Yunho's proven to be an even better roommate than San had initially thought, and his music taste is impeccable. They spend their nights just chilling on their beds with Yunho's alternative beats playlist playing at a low, relaxing volume and talking about their past endeavors. San learns a lot about Yunho and vice versa, and even though San insists there isn't much else to him besides his illness, Yunho finds a way to really engage him into profound conversations where San feels like he can actually talk about himself in ways that he himself had never thought about.

Yunho is also awfully intelligent, San learns. He'd graduated high school with _over _a perfect GPA while participating in basketball and student council. San doesn't know how the hell he ended up with a roommate as incredible as Yunho, but he sure is thankful.

They also visit the café together sometimes, and when Yunho officially meets Mingi, San can already see the sparks fly. They hit it off immediately, and as soon as Mingi's shift ends he joins San and Yunho at their table. Though San is used to the intellectual conversations that he and Yunho hold, Mingi offers the humor, most of which is less than intelligent, but it makes Yunho laugh so hard that smoothie nearly spews from his nostrils. San has to do his best not to laugh too hard for obvious reasons.

And then there's Wooyoung.

After Wooyoung left San's room that day, he didn't text San for the entirety of syllabus week, or the week after that. San secretly hoped each passing night that he would because he really did want to see Wooyoung again, but he figured that maybe Wooyoung was upset with him because he couldn't keep it together after their little adventure. Or maybe Wooyoung was upset with himself because he pushed San into doing something he really didn't have the physical capability of doing.

San doesn't think the former is the truth, however.

But it was okay. San had Yunho and Mingi, two friends that he really considered friends. More friends that San has ever had in his lifetime.

With Wooyoung's absence, however, San finds it harder and harder to breathe.

Despite having his tank cleaned and revamped, he still finds himself coughing his brains out at random and inconvenient times. He tries to suppress it most of the time, sometimes succeeding if he chugs a bunch of water, but one time, it's at night when he's just laying in his bed with Yunho across the way, and Yunho almost panics.

"San, should I call somebody?" Yunho asks, trying to remain calm.

San manages to shake his head even though the coughing is so intense that it blurs his vision for a few seconds. He doesn't know how long he coughs for. Yunho stands at his bedside, hesitantly holding out his hand unknowing if he should touch him or not. Eventually, San does stop coughing, his throat ablaze and his vision fuzzy. He blinks away a few tears that sprung during the episode, clearing his scratchy throat before turning to Yunho. "I'm sorry you had to see that." His voice is understandably hoarse.

"It's okay," Yunho says earnestly. "It was scary, but I'm glad you're alright."

San shrugs. "It's a normal thing. I know it sounds scary, but it's not as bad as it sounds, I promise." As soon as he says it, he realizes that maybe that's not the truth.

It probably _is _as bad as it sounds, but it's happened so often that San is used to it being that way.

"If you say so," Yunho says, though doubt is heavily present in his tone.

San's coughing fits range from mild to severe. He's out with Yunho and Mingi when he has a minor one, small coughs that he easy keeps contained in his mouth, though his two friends still watch him with concern. It happens during one or two of his classes, but his coughs are drowned out by videos that miraculously play at the same time.

San has to remind himself to breathe each time he has a fit, but it's exhausting. Breathing hurts just as much as the coughing does. He misses the feeling he got when he was with Wooyoung. When he could breathe like his lungs weren't constantly scarring over, when he could breathe like each puff of air felt like the freshest oxygen to ever enter his lungs.

He misses Wooyoung.

❀

It's Friday night when San does something really stupid.

Yunho is out at _another _party, leaving San alone in the dorm. He texts Mingi and asks if he's busy, and it turns out he's staying late at the dance studio for practice. It leaves San alone with his laptop and oxygen tank, lo-fi beats and mechanical whirring. He's incredibly bored.

Before he can even process the potential consequences, he's leaving his dorm room and walking in a familiar direction.

As the summer night breeze blows his hair back, he breathes shallowly, already beginning to feel the fatigue set in his bones, but he's almost made it to his destination. The stars shine above him, along with the street lamps and emergency lights. His mind wanders, and he finds himself remembering the last time he saw Wooyoung.

The flower.

He halts quite abruptly when he remembers it. How the petals had dissolved in his hands. How Wooyoung had gone without a trace. But when San thinks about it, maybe Wooyoung _had _left a trace.

A flower disintegrating like that isn't normal, but San had been so caught up in college life that he didn't really think about it. And now, Wooyoung isn't speaking to him.

Shaking his head and snapping himself out of his trance, he keeps walking, dragging his tank along. It takes about two more minutes for him to reach his destination, where the lights have mostly diminished, offering little illumination when he stops. He glances up, the towering trees a vague memory, but certainly not the spring.

No, San remembers the spring very vividly.

But the more he thinks about it, the more bizarre he realizes it is. A man randomly bathing in the spring, who Wooyoung seemed to know quite well and vice versa. A spot that seemed too peaceful and otherwordly to be real. Maybe he really _was _hallucinating it; maybe the shortage of oxygen to his brain made him see things. Yeah, that had to be it.

San looks down from the trees and at the grass beneath him. He can't see the greenness because of the lack of light, but he can imagine it.

Everything is weird. Everything surrounding Wooyoung is weird. When he thinks about everything he knows about Wooyoung, from the story of his guardians finding him in a basket to the spring to the disappearing flower, he finds his head getting tangled in a web of unexplainable events. He's confused as hell, to say the least.

He sighs. He supposes trying to connect the dots of Jung Wooyoung's life is better than contemplating his sad, sad existence.

"San?"

San's heart nearly stops. "Sannie, what are you doing here?"

When San glances to his left, there's Jung Wooyoung, dressed similarly to when San had first met him, approaching carefully. "You shouldn't be here, Sannie. Alone, especially," Wooyoung admonishes, though his tone is soft.

"I'm sorry," San says without even knowing why he is. "I was bored at the dorm and... I honestly don't know why I walked here."

"You know this place is farther than the café. You shouldn't walk this far alone."

"I know." San offers him a helpless smile.

Wooyoung sighs and reaches his hand out, a small smile appearing on his face. "Come on, Sannie. You need to rest for a little while before you go back to your dorm." San takes his hand and he immediately tugs it along, prompting San to start walking with him. "My place isn't far. You can rest there for a little while, and I'll walk you back to your dorm later tonight."

"Okay," San agrees way too easily.

And just like before, San finds it undoubtedly easier to breathe.

❀

Wooyoung's place is more like a cottage, a tiny house that looks like it's just one floor. It's painted a soft yellow, with a green roof and window accents. There's a garden on either side of the stone pathway where plants of unidentifiable varieties sprout from the soil. There are even planters home to vibrantly-colored flowers fixed upon the windowsills and flower decorations on the front door. Similar to the one at the spring, there's a tiny house sitting in one of the gardens, and it looks to be a miniature replica of the actual house.

"I know it looks a bit... flower-y," Wooyoung says as they approach the front door. "My guardians really like to garden."

"I can see that," San chuckles.

"And I know the house looks small on the outside, but it's bigger on the inside." Wooyoung twists the doorknob and pushes it open, and San is immediately hit with a whiff of a flower-like scent. What flower it is, San can't tell, but it's almost overwhelming. It's not unpleasant, not in the slightest, but it does make his head spin a bit.

"I'm home!" Wooyoung announces. The immediate hallway's light is on, as is another light further in that San assumes is the kitchen. When he glances around, he can see what Wooyoung meant when he said it looks smaller than it actually is. The ceilings are high much higher than San anticipated.

"In the kitchen!" a voice calls back. "We're making dinner!"

"Your guardians?" San asks in a whisper.

"Yup," Wooyoung answers not in a whisper. He lets go of San's hand. "I promise they're not mean. They might be a little skeptical of you at first since I don't really bring friends here, but they're some of the sweetest people you'll ever meet."

San nods, confident in Wooyoung's claim, and follows Wooyoung into the kitchen. There are two people, one over the stove and the other at the kitchen island chopping up vegetables. The one over the stove has a full head of shiny jet black hair, and the other has an equally lustrous head of white. "Sorry I'm a bit late, I was reading at the library," Wooyoung says.

"That's alright, Wooyoungie. We trust you. Besides, it's not like we control you or anything," the one over the stove responds without even turning around. On the other hand, the one chopping vegetables looks up.

"So how was—" The white-haired man stops his words as soon as his eyes meet San's. "Oh. Who... who is this, Wooyoung?"

The question makes the raven-haired man turn around. His eyes widen, head tilting in bewilderment. "Is this a friend of yours?"

Wooyoung nods as San immediately bows. "My name is San," San says. "It's nice to meet you."

The two men exchange a questioning glance between each other before acknowledging San's introduction. "Ah, forgive us," the black-haired man says, setting down the ladle in his hand. "My name is Seonghwa. I'm Wooyoung's..."

"Guardian," Wooyoung finishes for him. "It's okay, hyung. I already told him."

Seonghwa and the other man look at each other again, some sense of panic in both of their eyes. "Yes, guardian," Seonghwa says hesitantly.

"And my name is Hongjoong," the other man says. "Wooyoung's other... guardian. It's nice to meet you as well, San."

San bows again. "I'm sorry for bringing him here without saying anything," Wooyoung interjects. "I found him out near the clearing, alone, and with his... condition, I didn't want him to walk back to his dorm alone, and I figured he could use a rest before he made the trip back."

Seonghwa nods understandingly. "I see. Well, feel free to make yourself at home, San. You may stay for dinner as well. It will be ready in about an hour."

"Thank you very much," San says.

Wooyoung takes San on the grand tour of the house, which, like he said, is much bigger than it looks. There's an entire lower floor that Wooyoung doesn't take San down because of the stairs, but the first floor alone seems to be bigger than the house itself. Adjacent to the kitchen is a living room with windchimes and other whimsical decorations hanging from the ceiling, some sort of crystal ball propped upon a bronze sculpture in the middle of the room, a Victorian-style fireplace on the farthest wall, and photographs adorning the pastel yellow walls. San looks at everything curiously, especially the photographs.

A lot of them are in black and white or faded yellow, like photographs that would have been taken a whole century ago. "Ah, Seonghwa-hyung and Hongjoong-hyung like a lot of vintage stuff," Wooyoung says. "They collect antiques sometimes, and they like to take pictures with cameras from different eras. Surprisingly, they still work."

"I see," San says, astounded. Certainly enough, the majority of photos are of Seonghwa and Hongjoong, some of which are of them with a group of other people. San notices that the newer the photos look, the more Seonghwa and Hongjoong seem to smile.

"Yeah, they're quite old-fashioned, as you might be able to tell," Wooyoung says with a laugh. "But I promise they're cooler than they might seem on the surface. For example, they don't smother me like most parents would."

"What do you mean?"

"Like, they don't obsessively worry about me. They have a lot of faith in me, and as long as I come home unscathed they won't question me," Wooyoung says.

"That's debatable!" Hongjoong calls out from the kitchen, making San and Wooyoung laugh.

"Well, they don't question me _most _of the time," Wooyoung amends.

Though San is especially curious about downstairs, Wooyoung insists that he doesn't go down because of his tank. It's hard to argue with that, as San hasn't had to climb a flight of stairs in a long time, and he remembers the last time he climbed stairs being a difficult feat. Wooyoung does tell him, however, that his bedroom is down there, and apologizes that he won't get to see it. "Maybe, if you invest in some oxygen tank straps, I'll take you down there," he says, and San just rolls his eyes and punches Wooyoung's arm playfully.

San makes a note to invest in oxygen tank straps.

Seonghwa and Hongjoong call the two for dinner not even an hour later, and they all sit around the dining table. They've made steak and some sort of vegetable stir fry, and while San isn't the biggest fan of vegetables, he can't deny that it smells divine.

When they all settle into their seats, San can't help but feel a bit awkward. He's never had to experience this before, as he hasn't made many friends in his lifetime, and he can already tell Seonghwa and Hongjoong are wary of him. Even so, he can tell that Wooyoung's guardians are trying their best to help San feel welcome.

"So, San," Seonghwa says. "If you do not mind me asking, what is your ailment?"

"Oh, um, pulmonary fibrosis." San always expects the question.

Seonghwa nods. "Ah. What a gruesome disease."

Hongjoong hums in agreement. "Have they developed a cure for that yet?"

"No," San says. "I don't think there will ever be one."

"I am inclined to agree. Scars of any variety cannot be fully healed, and I imagine that is especially true when it comes to internal ones."

San is taken aback at Seonghwa's knowledge of the disease. "It's... definitely not easy," he says.

"Still, for you to have such an illness at a young age... is it genetic?" Seonghwa asks.

"I'm not sure. The doctors aren't sure either. It's inconclusive, probably always will be."

"Idiopathic, perhaps," Hongjoong chimes in. "But even then, a case of any nature in someone so young is extremely rare."

"Are you two doctors?" San blurts.

The two of them look at each other and laugh. "No, San. We are not doctors. We just know a lot of things," Seonghwa says.

"We read a lot of books," Hongjoong adds, holding back a chuckle.

San can't stop thinking about how... weird Seonghwa and Hongjoong are, but then again, anything surrounding Wooyoung has proven to be quite weird. His guardians are no exception. Plus, there's the whole trope of them finding Wooyoung in a basket, so...

"You're both very knowledgeable," San says, bowing his head.

Hongjoong smiles warmly at him, eyes crinkling at the sides. "Why, thank you, San. Knowledge comes with time and experience. We may know about your disease, but only what we learn from books and studies. We will never know what your pain is like because we have not experienced it for ourselves." Seonghwa nods.

"We are sure you suffer a great deal, and for that, we express our condolences. If there ever comes a time where you need assistance, please let Wooyoung know. And Wooyoung." Seonghwa turns towards the younger. "Please let us know as well. We would like to do our best to help."

San doesn't know _how _these two would be able to help, but he appreciates the sentiment nonetheless. Wooyoung, with a face stuffed full of vegetables, nods. "Wooyoung, I thought we raised you better than that," Hongjoong laughs, affectionately patting Wooyoung's arm. Wooyoung chews the rest of his food quickly and pouts.

"What, can I not chew my food?" he sasses, eliciting a similar laugh from Seonghwa.

At the mention of Seonghwa and Hongjoong "raising" Wooyoung, San suddenly notices that they don't look much older than him. Wooyoung, who is twenty years old, looks about the same age as his guardians.

What the fuck?

For the most part, they eat in silence, but San is finding it hard to dispose of the thought now. It's bugging him probably a lot more than it should, but it's just so _weird_, and the more he tries to wrap his head around it, the more confused he becomes. He occasionally glances up at Seonghwa and Hongjoong to observe their features, which are eerily _perfect. _Their skin is smooth and blemish-free, devoid of wrinkles or any sort of spots. With jawlines that look like they could cut someone and flawless complexions and facial features, San doesn't understand how these two could have possibly "raised" Wooyoung when Wooyoung can't look that much younger than them.

And not only that, but Seonghwa's eyes are blue and Hongjoong's eyes are green. Sure, they could be contacts, especially with how strikingly vibrant the colors are, but with how weirdly perfect they are, he can't erase the possibility that they might be real.

Hongjoong's hair isn't damaged at all from what San can tell, and he imagines that dyeing a hair to that extent would be extremely taxing on one's hair. But Hongjoong's hair is as voluminous and sheen as can be, and there aren't even any darker roots poking through. His hair is entirely white.

Before he knows it, the others have finished their food while he's still picking away at his. Granted, he has a lot on his mind and his appetite isn't exactly the strongest. He looks to Seonghwa apologetically, but the older just smiles at him and tells him to take his time as the he and Hongjoong pick up their dishes. He even takes Wooyoung's.

"Thank you, hyung," Wooyoung says.

"We wouldn't make you leave your friend," Seonghwa says with a wink. He turns away before he can notice Wooyoung narrowing his eyes at him.

When San looks at Wooyoung, he can see the resemblance between him and his guardians. Similarly to them, Wooyoung is basically perfect, which probably explains how San was so captivated by him. A perfectly sculpted jawline, healthy and brilliant hair, a flawless complexion. His eyes aren't blue or green, but a lighter shade of brown that San has never seen before, at least around where he lived. No, Wooyoung is definitely abnormal, but in the most beautiful way.

"You're staring," he says, a smirk playing on his face.

San snaps out of it, sheepishly looking back down at his food. "S-sorry."

Wooyoung just giggles, that addicting sound. "It's alright. How are you feeling?"

"Good," San answers, shoving another mouthful of food into his face to hide his embarrassment. He can already feel his cheeks heating up.

But he really does feel good. He hasn't really been paying attention, but he's been breathing fine, more than fine, actually, for the entirety of his visit. He wonders if he hadn't really noticed it because this is how he's _supposed _to breathe, like any other human whose lungs _aren't _turning to stone. He hasn't even coughed once. His lungs feel fine.

_More _than fine. San feels _good. __Normal._

San feels normal when he's with Wooyoung.

It's weird.

❀

When San finally finishes his food, Wooyoung gets up to use the bathroom. Seonghwa appears from the kitchen to retrieve San's plate, but in exchange, places a porcelain teacup in front of him. "What is it?" he asks.

"It's an herbal tea infused with ingredients that will give you strength for the walk back to your dorm," Seonghwa informs him.

"Oh. Thank you very much," San says, bowing his head.

Seonghwa smiles at him again, but doesn't turn to leave. Instead, he hovers above San, as if to watch him take a sip. Catching on, San takes his first sip, expecting it to be piping hot and bitter, but it's neither of those things. It's the perfect temperature, hot but not scalding, and the taste is mild and sweet, very much like honey. "It's good," he says.

"That's good to hear," Seonghwa says. He sighs. "You know, San, Wooyoung has never brought people here."

San remembers Wooyoung briefly mentioning that when they arrived. "I apologize if Hongjoong and I sounded a bit cautious of you when you first got here, but, well, you must be very special if Wooyoung brought you here. Not that he's afraid of introducing people to us or anything like that, but... well, don't tell him I told you this, but he never really made that many friends growing up."

That makes San frown. How could Wooyoung not make any friends? Sure, Wooyoung was homeschooled just like he was, but from what San can tell, Wooyoung is much more outgoing and full of life, not weighed down by disease or anything that would hinder his ability to make friends. In fact, it seems like Wooyoung would make a lot of friends. "So he's never brought anybody here to meet us," Seonghwa continues. "He... never had anybody to bring."

"Oh," San says, not knowing what else to say.

"He was homeschooled, yes, but he had plenty of outings when he was younger where he _could _have made friends. But he always insisted that the kids his age didn't like the things he liked, so he played alone." Seonghwa smiles comfortingly. "I promise it isn't as sad as it may sound. Wooyoung was always optimistic growing up and he said he didn't need a lot of friends to be happy."

San agrees. He didn't really have friends growing up either, though it was mostly because he was cooped up inside with his illness. He was friendly with a patient with whom he shared a room in the hospital once, but that's about it. When San thinks about it, maybe he wasn't really _happy _growing up, but it wasn't because of the lack of friends.

Probably the lack of going outside in general.

"Out of curiosity, San, what did Wooyoung tell you about us?" Seonghwa asks all of a sudden.

"Oh, um, he said..." San pauses, not knowing how to approach this. He feels like Wooyoung may have overshared and that Seonghwa would be mad at him for doing so. But Seonghwa's tone doesn't read angry at all, simply curious. "He said that you and Hongjoong are his guardians who might as well be his parents."

Seonghwa hums and nods. "Did he tell you how we came to raise him?"

"He... said you found him in a basket by a train station."

"Oh, he said that?" Seonghwa says with a single raised eyebrow. "I'm surprised he told you such a thing. You must have been utterly confused." San nods to agree with his statement. "Well, as absurd as it sounds, it is the truth. Hongjoong and I were out one night when we came across an infant in a basket. There was no one else around, just little Wooyoung sleeping, wrapped up in blankets in a basket adorned with flowers."

"Flowers?"

Seonghwa nods. "They were placed neatly around him, and there were vines of them weaved into the basket. Whoever left him there quite obviously had a thing for nature." He pauses as if to think. "Hongjoong and I believe that whoever left him there did not do it out of spite, but because they wanted somebody else to raise him. Perhaps they didn't see themselves fit to be parents, or wanted a better future for him. If they really did not care for him, they wouldn't have left him there in such a fashion."

"Makes sense," San says.

"I know you must think that a lot of the things Wooyoung tells you are strange, and understandably so. But just know that Wooyoung telling you these things means he really trusts you, and that means Hongjoong and I do too. We trust that you will not go around telling people about what Wooyoung tells you." Seonghwa's tone suddenly turns solemn, his ocean blue eyes staring intensely into San's. San can feel his blood run cold under such an icy glare, but it's not hostile.

"Y-yes, of course." San gives a solid nod, hoping Seonghwa doesn't question him.

"Good. Well, I'll leave you to your tea. I've pestered you enough for one night." Bowing his head and smiling reassuringly, Seonghwa turns on his heels and heads back into the kitchen. Almost as if on cue, Wooyoung reappears.

"Hey, San, I'm back! Hope you—oh, Seonghwa-hyung made you tea?"

"Oh, um, yeah. Said it would help me with the walk back."

Wooyoung scoffs and shakes his head, though he's smiling. "Oh, Seonghwa. Always thinking of others like that. Is it good?"

San takes another sip, not realizing he's been holding the cup the entire time. "Yeah, it's good."

"Seonghwa's tea concoctions are always good. He always knows what to put in it," Wooyoung says, sitting down next to San. He sighs and turns in his direction. "Look, Sannie, I'm really sorry I haven't been exactly present the past week."

"It's okay—"

"It's not though." Wooyoung immediately frowns. "I guess... I don't know, I thought you were mad at me because I made you go exploring."

"I wasn't... no, I wasn't mad at all," San says earnestly. "I promise I wasn't mad. If anything, I thought you might've been mad at me for some reason."

"What reason would I have to be mad at you?"

"I don't know."

Wooyoung chuckles, and San can't help but smile. The sound is so precious, like San wants to protect it. He wants to keep hearing it. "We should really work on this whole communication thing if we're gonna stay friends. Deal?"

"Deal."

San sips at the rest of tea, watching the house-shaped clock on the wall tick away. It has floral designs much like everything else in the house, its wands elegantly crafted into intricate twists, almost like vines. There are two small beams on either side of the clock, and resting on top of them are two tiny fairy figurines. "San?"

"Oh, sorry. Spaced out for a second there." San still doesn't look away from the clock. He squints, noticing that the fairy figurines look slightly familiar. One has black hair, the other has white, and they both have wings that spread out from their backs, painted a pastel pink and a baby blue, respectively. "That's a nice clock."

"Oh, that. Yeah, Hongjoong-hyung had it custom made. They're really into, like, dainty decorations," Wooyoung says.

More like fantastical, San thinks. Old-fashioned, sort of; the house reminds San a lot of something out of the early nineteen-hundreds, especially with all the faded yellow walls and pastel-colored decor, but it's cute. Even though the house _looks _old, it's far from decay. San swears he hasn't seen a single speck of dust in the place, and the floors, though seemingly worn, don't make a sound when walked upon. Despite its overall shabby appearance, the house is immaculate. San is amazed by it.

"Sannie, do you feel well enough to make the trip back to your dorm?" Wooyoung asks, and oh right, San has a dorm to go back to. If he's being honest, he's _been _ready; his lungs are being lungs and he hasn't let out a single cough. He feels like he can make the walk back with little difficulty, but he knows he probably can't do it alone.

"Yeah," San says, nodding, even though he doesn't really want to go back yet. His gaze is fixed on the empty teacup. He feels a bit sad for some reason, but maybe he _has _outstayed his welcome.

"Are you ready to go? I don't want to keep you here too late."

_No, I don't want to go._

"Yeah, I am." Fuck.

Wooyoung smiles and stands, as does San, but he can already feel himself frowning internally. Going back to the dorm means Wooyoung will have to leave, and he doesn't want Wooyoung to leave. He wants Wooyoung to stay, because he feels _normal _whenever he's with Wooyoung.

_It's weird._

They're at the front door when San hears Seonghwa say, "Wait." They both turn to see Seonghwa and Hongjoong approaching, and in Seonghwa's hand is a single stemless flower, colored a brilliant fuchsia.

San hears Wooyoung inhale sharply. "Hyung—"

"For you, San," Seonghwa says, cradling the flower with both of his hands.

Perplexed but flattered, San takes the flower delicately. He's no botanist, but it sure is pretty. "What is it?"

"An azalea," Seonghwa says. Hongjoong is smiling beside him, nodding as if to concur with Seonghwa's answer. "Please, San, take care. If you ever need anything, let Wooyoung know. And Wooyoung." Seonghwa turns to him. "If San needs anything that we can help with, let us know." He looks between the two of them and smiles warmly, just like before. "Both of you, take care of each other, alright?"

San glances over to see Wooyoung smiling as well, bowing his head. "Of course."

"Y-yeah," San agrees, nodding.

"Thank you for coming to visit, San," Hongjoong says. "It was lovely meeting you."

"Oh, thank you for having me! It was nice meeting you too." San bows, as do Seonghwa and Hongjoong, before he and Wooyoung step back out into the summer night.

The walk back to the dorm is mostly silent, apart from the chirping of the cicadas and the occasional brush of wind. San holds the azalea in one hand and the handle to his oxygen tank in the other, but he finds himself staring down at Wooyoung's hand a couple times, wishing he could be holding it instead. Wooyoung, seemingly oblivious, keeps his eyes fixed ahead of them.

San doesn't know how long the walk is, but it doesn't feel long at all. Not like the walk to the clearing, where San's lungs felt like shit and his body was ready to stop. Somehow, the moments with Wooyoung don't last long enough, or they feel like they last a shorter amount of time than it actually is. All San knows is that when Wooyoung is around him, he feels like he could take on the world without an oxygen tank, without anybody to hold his hand and walk through life with him.

But Wooyoung is that one exception.

The trip up to San's floor is still silent. While San's lungs are working fine, he certainly feels like his heart isn't. It's beating faster, too hard for his liking, and he wonders if his disease has spread to his heart. He's never experienced this sort of thing before.

"Can you hold this?" San asks Wooyoung, holding out the pink azalea. Wooyoung takes it and San fishes the key to his dorm out of his pocket. He's holding it just as tenderly as San had, looking down at it with a certain _something _in his eyes. "Thanks." Wooyoung nods, handing the flower back to San.

Of course, Yunho isn't back yet. It's nearly eleven, but San figures he'll still be out for much longer. The beats are still playing, and Yunho's desk lamp is still switched on. San turns to Wooyoung, who smiles at him. "Um, thank you for walking back with me," San says.

"No problem, Sannie."

Sannie. San doesn't know how such a nickname can make his heart flutter. "Are you still feeling okay?" Wooyoung questions, his smile disappearing and eyes filling with concern instead.

"Yeah," San says. "I'm feeling great."

The smile returns. "I'm glad. I'm, uh, sorry if my guardians came across as a little weird. I know they're old-fashioned and all. You probably weren't expecting the house to look so... not modern."

"No, no! It's fine, really. I kinda liked it, had a cute vintage charm to it." Wooyoung giggles at that. San wants to play it on repeat.

"Well, Sannie, I wasn't planning on running into you tonight, but I'm glad I did," Wooyoung says, and San can feel his heart picking up speed again. Wooyoung is going to leave soon. "Text me, yeah? Again, I'm sorry about the whole not texting you thing this past week. I promise I'll be more cautious of that."

"No worries."

But San _is_ worrying. He wants Wooyoung to stay.

"Well, have a good night, Sannie."

"Wait."

As Wooyoung turns on his heels, San's body acts on its own. He reaches for Wooyoung's hand, catching his fingers and dropping the flower as a result. Wooyoung stares dumbfounded at their hands, then looks back up at San.

And as San's heart does a kickflip, his lungs are instantly hit with a breath of fresh air. He's never found it so easy yet so difficult to breathe. "Yeah?" Wooyoung says, ever so patient.

Golden. That's what his eyes are. Golden eyes and golden skin, the epitome of perfection if San's ever known it. San wants to look at them forever. As he breathes, he can feel himself getting lost in Wooyoung's eyes, and it takes everything in San's being to remember that _Wooyoung has to leave_, and that he can't keep him here forever.

"Thank you."

He doesn't say what for.

Wooyoung doesn't ask, either. The golden boy just smiles, not widely but not disingenuously. "You're welcome, Sannie. Have a good night, okay? And take care of yourself."

"I will."

And San lets Wooyoung go. He doesn't watch, because it might be too painful to, but he does kneel down and picks up the flower that he accidentally dropped while grabbing Wooyoung's hand. It's still there, still pink, colorful. It doesn't evaporate.

San eyes it as he walks to his bed. It doesn't disappear. When he places it on his nightstand, it remains. He sighs with relief, wondering why he's so afraid it'll disappear. It was a gift from Seonghwa; why _would _it disappear? Sure, it happened that one other time, but that doesn't mean it'll happen this time. After all, Seonghwa _gave _it to him, in the flesh. It's a real, solid flower.

Out of everything San could have done, he _thanked _Wooyoung, for nothing in particular. He rolls his eyes at himself, thinking about how stupid he must have sounded.

Letting out a deep breath, San swings himself onto his bed and takes out his phone, only to see a few texts from Mingi from not too long ago.

** [Mingi]**

_yo! just got out of practice, u still wanna hang?_

_just let me know what's up, i'll be awake all night lol_

Even though he's tired, San could still use some company. Plus, the texts were from about twenty minutes ago. Surely Mingi is still awake and willing to hang out.

** [San] **

_yeah sure, i'm at the dorm rn_

_yunho's at a party, so it's just me. feel free to come over_

** [Mingi] **

_k cool, be there in about a half hour_

San lets out another deep breath, locking his phone and setting it down next to him. He rolls over, facing his nightstand. With the help of his oxygen tank, he breathes, his heart beating normally again, and watches the flower until his eyes slip shut.

❀

San awakes to the sound of knocking. It's a solid knock, not soft but not pounding either. It takes him a few seconds to remember that Mingi is coming over. Grunting, he stands up, coughing as he does so, and waddles over to the door. Mingi's there, gummy smile and all, with a bottle in his hand. "Guess who!"

"Mingi, I can see you," San replies flatly.

Mingi pouts, stepping past San and into the dorm room. "You're no fun."

"I'm dying."

"Touché." Mingi smirks, pointing a finger at him using the hand that's holding a bottle of alcohol, now that San can see it.

"Mingi, I can't drink," he says. "Too risky."

"Who said it was for you?" Mingi responds sarcastically, and San can't argue with that. "It's just some cheap wine my roommate smuggled onto campus during the move in. Figured it would just make me giggly and hopefully funnier."

"Well, don't make me laugh too hard. I'm not trying to make the phrase 'I'm dying' a result of laughter like its modern usage denotes."

"I will try my darned hardest _not _to be funny. Though a lot of people have laughed just by looking at my face, so."

San chuckles, letting out a tiny cough. "See? Point proven," Mingi says. He sits on the floor by the side of Yunho's bed, whipping out his keychain that apparently has a built-in bottle opener attached to it, and pops the cork on the bottle. "Well, since you're not having any, don't mind if I do." And, sure enough, he sips directly from the bottle.

"Well I'm definitely not having it now," San says, sitting back on his bed when he notices that his breathing has returned to normal.

Normal being shitty.

"So what did you do today?" Mingi asks after he takes a sip.

"Went to class. Hung out here for a little before I got bored and went for a walk."

Mingi raises an eyebrow. "You went for a walk? By yourself?"

"I'm not useless, okay," San groans, slightly frustrated. "I went for a walk by myself the night I met you, remember?"

"Oh, yeah. Okay, so you went for a walk. Where did you go?"

"Um... sort of off campus."

"Okay, well, that's definitely farther than the café, and you went alone," Mingi points out, frowning. "Where off campus did you go?"

"Just near some woods. I don't know how to describe it specifically, but yes, it's definitely farther than the café."

"You went out near some woods, alone, with your oxygen tank. And you _didn't _collapse?" Mingi asks.

San scoffs. "No, and I'm clearly unscathed so I didn't get hurt or anything like that. Besides, one of my friends was close by and happened to see me, so he... walked me back here."

"Yunho?"

"No, his name is Wooyoung. You haven't met him. Yunho hasn't met him either."

When San thinks about it, he hasn't even told Yunho about Wooyoung yet. He supposes it's an important thing to tell them. "I met him the same night I met you, after I left the café." San says. "He was hanging out near the fountain and just started talking to me."

Mingi nods consideringly. "Just out of nowhere? Sounds like a nice dude."

San chuckles at the fond memory. "Yeah, he said I looked lonely and could use someone to talk to. In a way, I guess I'm glad he approached me like that. He's... a really good friend."

"A really good friend, eh?" Mingi says suggestively, waggling his eyebrows as he takes another sip from the bottle.

"What?" San frowns defensively.

"You talk about him in a way, like, you're completely smitten. Don't know if you notice it, but you sound like you're totally in love with him." Mingi says, his words already not stringing together well.

"Wha—no! We've literally known each other for a week. And I don't... I don't even like guys like that."

Right?

Mingi just bursts out laughing. "Oh, man. Look, I'm about as straight as a cooked noodle. I don't judge."

"You're gay?"

"Bi, thank you very much." Mingi giggles like a fucking school girl despite his voice being deeper than the Grand Canyon. "But I just like to use that analogy. Look, point is, you can say you like guys. It's _okay._"

"Mingi, I have never once thought of a guy like that," San says.

"Doesn't mean you _won't_," Mingi argues, grinning and raising his eyebrows playfully.

And honestly, San can't really refute that. It's college. For all San knows, he could have some sort of sexual awakening. Not that he's ever really thought about it in depth, though. With all the appointments and coughing and dying, San doesn't really think about his attraction to people all that much. But he supposes college could be the opportunity he has to figure shit out.

But the important thing here is, he is not smitten. He doesn't have feelings for Wooyoung.

Wooyoung.

As soon as San thinks of his name, he coughs, suddenly remembering the flower. When he glances to the nightstand, the spot where he'd left the flower is vacant. He stands up almost instantly, nearly losing his balance and stumbling on his own two feet. "Whoa, there," Mingi says. "What's wrong?"

"I... Mingi, when you came in, did you see a flower there?" San points to the spot.

Mingi looks at the nightstand, confused. "Um... no? I don't think so."

"It was bright pink."

"Then no, I didn't see it," Mingi says. "Why?"

"It was there! I put it there!" San near exclaims, frantically looking around the room. There's no sight of any pink flower. "There's no way—"

He coughs. Once, once more, and several after that. Collapsing from his feet and onto the bed, San clutches his chest with one of his hands and coughs into the other, his eyes squeezing shut as his body exudes nothing but coughs and pain. His head pounds, and he closes his eyes to bypass the blurry vision.

"San, h-hey," Mingi says, and San can feel hands on him.

"Don't," he manages to croak out in between coughs. He shakes his head as firmly as he can. Mingi releases him.

"Should I call someone?" he asks, voice serious unlike any other time San's heard him speak.

San shakes his head again as his coughs sizzle down into wheezes. "Water," he gasps, pointing to his desk where he always keeps a bottle of water. Mingi retrieves it quickly, and before San can start coughing again, he opens the bottle and chugs it. He takes deep breaths through the cannula in his nose, his head slowly regaining consciousness as he opens his eyes. Mingi is looking down at him, worry flooding his eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

_Not really, _San thinks, but for now, after a coughing episode, he is. He nods, and Mingi lets out a sigh. "Wow, that was scary."

"It's normal," San says, his voice still hoarse. "Yunho witnessed it not too long ago. Just, if it ever happens again, don't touch me and don't call anyone. I'm fine when it happens, it just has to happen, you know?"

"I... guess," Mingi says, clearly hesitant.

As the oxygen seeps back into San's system through the tube in his nose, he tilts his head back, looks up at his ceiling, and cries.

It starts out as a lip quiver. Then a few tears. Then many tears.

He knows he's not supposed to cry. But everything is just a constant reminder.

He can't escape this.

"Hey, San," Mingi says. There's a hand on his shoulder, and the bed beside him dips. This time, San doesn't tell Mingi not to touch him. "It's okay."

San shakes his head again, sniffling. The cannula makes it hard. The cannula makes _everything _hard. This _disease _makes everything hard. "Why can't I just be _normal_?" he whimpers.

Mingi slings his arm around San's shoulders. "Why do I have to be fucking _dying_? If I'm dying, why can't I just fucking die already? It would make things a whole hell of a lot easier for everybody!" His voice raises in volume as more tears begin to pour from his eyes despite his efforts to subdue them.

"San, hey." The hand on his shoulder tightens its grip. "Just let it out."

"I just want to _breathe_, Mingi. Like any other normal human being. I want to be able to walk wherever I want without having to drag around an oxygen tank, drink or eat whatever I want without worrying about getting sick... just, I want to be _normal._"

"I get it, San."

And San wants to scream, _no, you don't fucking get it, _but he can't bring himself to. Not when he knows Mingi is trying, because _everyone tries for the dying. _He's doing what he can. He's expressing sympathy. And who is San to tell Mingi to fuck off? He's managed to befriend this person, and he's not about to kick him out of his life just for _trying._

"You might be dying, sure," Mingi says, "but I'm glad you're alive. I'm sure the same goes for Yunho and Wooyoung too. Of course we don't want you to be dying... but we don't want you to be _dead _either. So while you're still alive... for our sake and yours, _please _don't say that you wish you were dead or anything like that."

San can't argue with him. He can't argue because Mingi is _right._

"I just... I just bring everyone down. I'm nothing but a hindrance."

Mingi shakes his head as well as San's shoulders. "No. _You _think you're a hindrance. Nobody else thinks that."

"But—"

"No but's," Mingi interrupts, gripping his shoulders tightly. "Yes, watching you cough like that was scary, but that doesn't make me not want to be your friend. You're stuck with me now, Choi San. I'm not going anywhere, and like I said, I'm sure Yunho and Wooyoung feel the same way."

San can't help but smile a bit. He sniffles again, the cannula still making it difficult, but somehow, it feels easier. "Thank you, Mingi."

"Anytime."

It's then that San remembers how he'd thanked Wooyoung as well, for nothing in particular, but he finds himself drawing the parallels. When San is with Wooyoung, he _feels normal_, the one thing San wishes for more than anything else. Here, with Mingi, he feels reassured, as short-lived as it may be. It's the same with Wooyoung; he can't be with Wooyoung all the time, as they live two separate lives, but he wants to be.

With the time San spends with Wooyoung, he feels like everything that he isn't, everything that he wishes he were.

He'd thanked Wooyoung for nothing in particular, but perhaps it's because he was thanking him for everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/galaxysangs)


	4. hyacinth (white)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa what? it's back? after 3438582 years? wow

Wooyoung almost throws a party when San finally gets the straps for his oxygen tank. In fact, he goes over to San’s dorm and helps him attach them. Even though San would still have to lug his tank around while he has his backpack on for class, at least he can carry his tank on his back whenever he goes exploring with Wooyoung (or just anywhere else in general).

That day is when Wooyoung finally gets to meet Yunho. He returns from class to see Wooyoung kneeling down to attach the straps to the tank and San casually standing over him, watching. They hit it off well, with their exuberant energies easily mingling with one another. Whereas Yunho’s is more immature and Wooyoung’s is more childlike, it still makes for lighthearted conversation and a whole lot of laughs that San doesn’t participate in, but he watches with a smile.

Yunho treats them to dinner at the student union that night. San makes sure to watch them, to really _watch _them and the way their faces lift with laughter or how their voices peak or how their eyes and nose scrunch with every nuance of happiness. San’s expression is much softer, much lighter on his facial muscles, but his heart is beaming and he feels _good. _He can breathe.

He can feel the oxygen from his tank circulating through his body. Breathes it in and then pushes it out. It doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. The tips of his fingers and toes may be swollen, but it’s more of a physical hindrance than a pain. Here, surrounded by people who can breathe without an oxygen tank, in front of the two most arguably important people in San’s university life, he feels _normal_.

They take a trip to the center of campus, where the fountain is. Where Yunho had San take a picture of him, one that’s still sitting comfortably in both their phones. Where San first met Wooyoung, who was hunched over some flowers, smiling, however many weeks ago. They’re back here again, the three of them.

“You should get up there and get your picture taken, Sannie!” Yunho says, giving his shoulders a gentle push.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” San says. He very well _could_; stepping onto a ledge of a fountain doesn’t require much energy. He can do it and then get off without having to exert much lung power. But he’d much rather watch either of them do it.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Wooyoung interjects his thoughts, as if he _knows_. As if those kind eyes can peer into his brain and dissect his predictable thoughts. “Come on, San! You have straps now, you can stand up there and get your picture taken without having to hold your tank.”

San scoffs and rolls his eyes. The peer pressure from two of his friends becomes too much to bear (not really, he would do anything for these two and stepping onto the rim of a fountain is the _least _he can do), and with the help of Wooyoung’s hand, he steps onto the stone of the fountain.

The world looks so much smaller from one foot off the ground. A grin erupts on his face; never has his feeble body felt so tall. So monumental, so important. He’s finally taller than Yunho up here, not by much, but it’s something.

“How should I pose?” he asks almost teasingly while his two friends whip out their phones.

“However you want, Sannie. It’s your moment, after all.” Wooyoung gives him a big smile, one that’s too big to hold the amount of happiness his body must contain.

In his moment, San smiles, a wide, cheesy one, while he hooks his thumbs under the straps of his oxygen tank, resembling an elementary school child being sent off to their first day of school. Just as pure, and just as terrifying. Yunho and Wooyoung snap the same picture of him, from slightly different angles, but the same nonetheless. He retrieves his own phone from his pocket and hands it to Wooyoung, who instructs him to pose differently.

San ponders for a moment before forming a heart with his hands, right over his own heart. He smiles with his eyes closed, finding himself not caring how stupid he looks.

He looks at the trio of pictures, feeling his heart jump in his chest. Apart from the cannula connecting his nasal passage to his oxygen tank, he looks like a student, an average twenty-something-year-old. With his tank obstructed from view, it appears as if he’s just some kid with a tube up his nose.

It makes his chest twist in a way that doesn’t hurt for once.

Wooyoung spends the night at their dorm. He eats peanut butter cracker sandwiches until there aren’t any more left and there’s a mountain of crumbs in the middle of their room. He chugs water to wash down said peanut butter cracker sandwiches while Yunho helps himself to a can of alcoholic seltzer. San drinks water and a few apple slices, courtesy of Wooyoung. Apparently there’s an apple tree in his backyard, but that’s no surprise to San.

At one point, Yunho stands up and slings a backpack over his shoulder.

“Where are you going?” San asks him.

“Eh, a friend of mine asked if I wanted to stay over at his place,” Yunho tells him. “So I’m heading out. You can have my bed, Wooyoung.”

“Are you sure?” Wooyoung asks even though he’s already hopping onto Yunho’s bed.

“Yeah.” Yunho smirks, giving San one last all-knowing look before leaving them with a tiny goodbye and a wave.

Somehow, it’s as if Wooyoung hasn’t sensed Yunho’s blatant intentions. Or, if he does, he makes no effort to show it.

With Yunho gone, San finds it both easier and harder to breathe. Easier, because San always seems to breathe more easily whenever Wooyoung is around and there’s one less person to take up oxygen in the room. Harder, because it’s Wooyoung, and for whatever reason, San feels his lungs and heart pump air and blood at an accelerated rate, and he’s pretty sure it’s not because of the whole lungs turning to stone thing.

“So,” Wooyoung says, “whatcha wanna do for the rest of the night?” He checks his phone. “It’s only midnight.”

“_Only_,” San drawls.

“Oh right, your bedtime was what, three hours ago?”

“I’m dying, okay? I sleep a lot.”

San knows Wooyoung isn’t a huge fan of the “I’m dying” jokes, but to his surprise, Wooyoung laughs. “Well, you’re awake now. Do you _want _to go to sleep?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Good, ‘cause neither do I!” Wooyoung flashes a bright grin his way. “Um… we could watch some videos? Listen to some music?”

“I’m fine with either.”

“Or! We could watch _music videos_!” Wooyoung exclaims before pouncing onto San’s bed without warning. Being that it’s a twin-sized mattress and San is unexpecting, it certainly causes quite the jump in San’s chest.

So that’s how they end up watching music videos at midnight. Sharing a pair of tangled earbuds together, San plugs them in and places his laptop on both his and Wooyoung’s laps. They’re touching with how close they are, and as much as Wooyoung steals San’s breath away, having another human being in his personal bubble makes it almost effortless to breathe. San doesn’t even know how that’s _possible_, especially for someone like him.

San is on the outer end of the bed so his oxygen tank doesn’t have to join them on the mattress. At one point, Wooyoung rests his head on San’s shoulder, his own breathing matching San’s. Except Wooyoung doesn’t have a tube up his nose or a pair of shitty lungs. San tries not to think about that, though.

He’s happy. He feels good. With Wooyoung’s even, sleep-filled breathing next to him, he feels _good_.

Wooyoung’s arms are crossed over his torso, bottom lip slightly jutted out. He sleeps soundly, a few strands of his black hair falling over his eyes. San has the urge to push it back.

He checks the clock. It’s 1:24.

Figuring that Wooyoung would actually want to _sleep _sleep, San pauses the music video, which ironically only wakes up the sleeping boy. He mumbles something incoherent before sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Time for you to sleep,” San answers.

Wooyoung chuckles and yawns, squinting at the time on San’s laptop. “Oh, it’s only one-thirty?”

“_Only_? Sheesh, how late do you usually stay up?”

“I mean, if I don’t have homework, then, like, four.”

San’s eyes nearly bug out of his head. “What? How do you even function?”

“I just don’t need that much sleep, I guess,” Wooyoung says with a laugh. “Guess the songs put me to sleep, but you’re also pretty warm, so that might be why too.”

San can feel the hot blush on his face as he turns away so Wooyoung won’t see the shock in his eyes.

“If anything,” Wooyoung says, “_you’re _the one who needs to sleep, Sannie.”

“Are you gonna leave me again?” San asks jokingly.

As if it isn’t a joke, Wooyoung doesn’t laugh.

“No,” he says sternly. “Unless you want me to.”

“N-no! I mean, uh, no. I don’t… want you to leave.”

_Breathe, San. It’s just Wooyoung._

“Then I won’t leave,” Wooyoung says. He gets up from San’s bed and slips into Yunho’s, and San wants to reach out to him and say _wait, you can sleep in my bed if you want_, but as if his cannula has coiled itself around his vocal cords, the words get trapped in his throat and his tongue dries up.

So he just watches as Wooyoung gets into a bed that isn’t his, watches as Wooyoung falls asleep before him. His body moves up and down, inflating and deflating beneath the blanket. It’s calming to watch, like listless ocean waves. San wishes his breathing was like that, instead of a roaring, furious tsunami.

Maybe then, he could actually sleep without drowning in his dreams.

❀

San could breathe once. It was a long time ago, so long ago and short-lived and insignificant that his memories of the time are fuzzy. He remembers when his lungs started their decline; he was thirteen, in P.E. class, when he was doing laps around the gym and something didn’t feel right. He could easily do laps, he hadn’t had any trouble doing them before. But he was heaving after one lap, feeling as if his breaths were cracking, stuttering as they made their way into his lungs. He collapsed in the corner of the gymnasium, hands clutched to his chest as he pressed down on it, wheezing, “I can’t breathe, please… help me—”

Asthma was what they thought it was at first. Plenty of kids have it, apparently. But no amount of artificial air from an inhaler did the trick; San would still end up doubled over somewhere against the wall in an attempt to blend in with the background and shield himself from the confused looks of his peers.

When he was finally examined, when his body was processed through a giant tube that took pictures of the inner workings of it, he saw what looked like spider webs strung across the images of his lungs.

“Those are supposed to be there, right? There’s all sorts of funky stuff in my body,” San had said to his mother on the way back home. She stared at the road ahead, her face set in stone.

“No, honey,” she’d said. “It’s supposed to be black. Not white.”

The doctors had said that they needed to run more tests to confirm what the condition was. His mother prayed to God that it wasn’t lung cancer, but the actual diagnosis wasn’t exactly much better.

Cancer can be treatable, maybe even curable, if it’s caught early enough. Some people beat it altogether and it won’t come back.

Pulmonary fibrosis is insidious. Treatable, yes. Curable, no. Once the damage is done, it’s done. And it never. Goes. Away.

The solution? Hide Choi San away, where nothing could hurt him. Where he was safe from pathogens and dust and bacteria and germs and anything that could harm his lungs. It wasn’t exactly his decision, but he was at the mercy of his parents and he was too tired to put up any sort of fight. The doctors encouraged San’s parents to let him do _some _activity, to go out once in a while because cooping him up and shutting him in could actually _harm _him more than help him. So on the occasion, San’s parents would take him to go grocery shopping or out for a walk in the park, but that was about it.

The older San got, the worse his lungs got. The invisible spider in his lungs kept spinning its thread, coating the black in more white. Entanglements of scars and stone that weighed him down, took the breath and held it there. He was given his oxygen tank and cannula at fifteen. Hospitalized for an entire year at sixteen. Released, then locked away again.

At some point, the sharp incline of the severity of his disease came to a flatline. Where the spider seemed to hibernate, or its threads became thinner. Whatever the case, San’s lungs have been pretty shitty, but at least they’ve been stagnant for a while. Not getting better, but stable. Perhaps that was what helped San’s mother in making the decision of sending him to university (along with the whole guilt trippy “I’m dying” card). He wasn’t doing _better_, but he was doing _fine_.

Fine enough to live again, or at least try to, like he did before the spider was born, before that calamitous day. He wanted to, _needed _to. He couldn’t allow himself to let the web turn to steel and hold him in his very own self-made straitjacket. He needed to _live_, as much as he could.

When San dreams, it’s as if that day never existed.

When he sleeps, it’s as if his dream self knows the cannula is still in his nose. That oxygen is still being poured into his lungs. But dream self also still remembers what the time was like before that, when he could breathe without it. So now, he finds himself in a field of flowers, in a neverending dome of fresh air and sweet, sweet oxygen, cannula-less.

He runs. Petals fly in his wake and he takes in the lemony sky and the satin ground, knowing all too well that once his eyes open, all of it will be swallowed up by steel and hard-edged stone.

_“Sannie, do you want a new pair of lungs?”_

_“What? They can do that?”_

_“Yes. You’ll have new lungs, somebody else’s, but they’ll work and you won’t hurt anymore.”_

_“Are you being truthful, eomma?”_

Looking back, maybe she should have said yes.

❀

When San wakes up, he’s, well, still alive. And there’s still a lump in Yunho’s bed that’s too small to be Yunho.

He checks the alarm clock on the nightstand between the two beds. 9:32. He could definitely use some more sleep, but this is about as much as he can get. Once he’s up, he’s up.

Wooyoung remains asleep, eyelids blissfully closed and skin glowing beneath the tangerine sun.

How peaceful he looks, San thinks. Like nothing plagues him, effortlessly beautiful and content. He breathes so smoothly. San is mesmerized just watching another human being sleep.

He watches with the pang of envy and dread loud and monumental in his chest.

❀

“Can we go to the spring again?”

Wooyoung looks up at him, lips perfectly closed around a straw to a blueberry smoothie (San got him hooked on them). “You wanna go back there?”

“Y-yeah. I really liked it.”

Wooyoung sighs. “San, the last time I took you there, you almost passed out on me.”

“I wasn’t going to _pass out_. I just got lightheaded.”

“Well, whatever the case, it was still worrying. I can’t take you there again.”

“Come on, I have my straps now! I think I’ll be okay now that I don’t have to lug this thing with me like fucking luggage.” San glances down at his tank that sits politely by his side, speechless, apart from the minute amount of noise it makes.

Wooyoung sighs again, this time adding voice to it. And a smile. One that starts of small, but grows into the one San has come to know quite well. Wide and adventurous.

“Fine. If you really want to go back, I can take you back.”

San smiles wide enough to match Wooyoung’s. He’s just sure that Wooyoung’s looks ten times better than his.

❀

The journey through the woods is familiar. Somehow, San is able to remember the little details, notably the changes in the shades of green as they near the clearing. This time around, his lungs are a bit more functional and his muscles ache less. Whether it’s actually due to his tank having straps now is unknown to him, but he isn’t going to complain either way.

There’s no way he can complain when he’s greeted with the magnificent sight once more.

Under a sky that’s both sunny and hazy at the same time, the oasis in the woods remains just as breathtaking (again, pun intended) as it is in his memory. With the fast-approaching onslaught of winter, the greenery somehow manages to stand out, the leaves barely having appeared to change color, unlike the leaves at the entrance to the woods.

And it’s warm. Warmer than it is before the curtain of leaves. San actually has to take his jacket off.

“Well?” Wooyoung says, stepping down the earth’s shallow incline towards the spring. “Is it as magical as you remember it?”

“Yeah,” San exhales, glancing around. He follows Wooyoung down to the spring, where the scent of wet earth and flowers snake their way into his nostrils along with the oxygen from his tube. It’s a pleasant humid feeling that San would probably normally dislike, but he finds himself at peace as he sits down, and the earth almost seems to shift to fit him. “Is Yeosang here?”

“Yeosang? O-oh, right, you met him.” Wooyoung’s eyes meet the water, almost as if to search for the mysterious man. “Um, he could be.”

“What exactly does he do here?”

“He, uh, bathes here sometimes,” Wooyoung says almost sheepishly, turning back to look at San.

“Is he homeless or something?”

“No, he’s just… really in tune with nature.”

San snorts. “Ah, I see, one of those people. Well, that’s pretty cool. He’s a little weird, but he seems nice.”

“He’s a little aloof for sure, but he’s really kind once you get to know him,” Wooyoung says with a smile. “So anyway, tell me more about you.”

“You’d think after a month of knowing each other you’d know everything there is to know about someone like me,” San jokes, flattening his back against the ground. It’s soft but not squishy. He could fall asleep here.

“Someone like you? Please don’t tell me you’re referring to your illness. I will personally chuck you into this spring if you are.” Wooyoung follows suit, laughing as he gets into position.

The rosy haze of the sky and the blanket of emerald leaves weaken the sun’s harsh gleam, leaving just enough light for San to gaze comfortably upwards.

He smiles, cynicism pooling in his stomach. “Well, yeah. There isn’t a lot to a sick person besides the fact that they’re sick. Wait, I mean, there _can _be a lot to sick people besides the fact that they’re sick, but I am not one of those people since I’m not exactly doing anything profound with my life.”

“So?” Wooyoung says, indignance present. “You don’t have to do anything profound with your life, and that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to you than just your illness. You said you like to explore, or, you would if you could. Where would you want to go, San?”

“Everywhere and anywhere,” San answers with a clear, heavy sigh. A few birds fly overhead. Trees shake their leaves and they rustle in the breeze.

_Everywhere and anywhere_.

He would walk until his feet bled and his entire _body _turned to stone. Spend the money that his parents spent on his medical bills on going wherever he could to take pictures, to eat good food, experience the rich culture of wherever his mode of transportation took him. He’d go to fucking _space _if he could.

“Me too.”

“Well, you _can_,” San tells him.

“Doesn’t mean I _realistically_ can,” Wooyoung counters playfully. “Like yeah, I’d wanna travel a whole bunch and experience what the world has to offer, but shit costs money that I don’t have.”

“We can dream.”

“That we can, Sannie.” Wooyoung chuckles at the same time a bird tweets and lands on his forehead.

“Shit!” San exclaims.

To his surprise, the bird doesn’t budge. Don’t birds usually fly away at any semblance of noise?

Wooyoung glances up, the rest of his body unmoving. “Uh… Wooyoung?”

“What?”

“You’ve got a bird on your forehead.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Birds usually don’t… land on people’s foreheads.”

Wooyoung shrugs, the motion not perturbing the bird in the slightest. “This one does, apparently.”

“Uh…”

“Try touching it.”

“Aren’t they riddled with diseases?”

Wooyoung smirks and shrugs again. “Why don’t you find out?”

San hesitantly extends his arm, fingers loosely outstretched as they make their way towards the bird. The bird twitches as it cocks its head, its beak opening in a shrill, quick chirp before taking off, startling San but not Wooyoung. In fact, Wooyoung just grins, eyes shut.

“What the hell?” San says.

“What, Sannie?”

“What, are you just some bird magnet or something?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Wooyoung chuckles. “The animals around here are just really friendly.”

“Friendly… right.”

Friendly, like Wooyoung. Friendly, like mysterious stranger Yeosang and eerily perfect guardians Hongjoong and Seonghwa.

_Uh, hey, Wooyoung, no offense but why is everything and everyone in your life so fucking weird?_

_Snap out of it, San. Don’t scare him off. He genuinely likes you. Don’t be an ass. You’ll figure it out eventually, just keep your mouth shut and go along with it._

“So, Sannie, what else _would _you do if you didn’t have shit lungs?” Wooyoung asks, grounding San back to reality.

“Uh… besides traveling? I don’t know. I don’t really think that far. I usually don’t have the time or patience to sit and think about what I want to do with my time when most of it is spent just trying to breathe and not focusing on it hurting.”

Wooyoung groans and rolls over onto his stomach, closer to San. San startles a bit, swallowing nervously as Wooyoung’s face appears dangerously close to his.

“Okay, San. I’m going to ask you again. If you didn’t have a pair of shit lungs, what would you do? Don’t even think about it. Just answer.”

How _could _San think of an answer with this boy’s face right up against his? His eyes are demanding, soft, but still demanding. Curious with a hint of scrutiny. If anything, San has to think, _okay, San, Wooyoung is right in front of your face and he smells really good. Like fruit and flowers, and you don’t even know what flowers smell like because you don’t spend time sniffing them. But he smells really good, and he’s really close. Oh look, you’re sweating. Breathe, San. Breathe._

So he does.

Effortless.

No skips or stutters. Just a smooth flow of air, in and out. As if there is no tube, no tank, no obstruction whatsoever.

Wooyoung is looking at him expectantly, his face having softened. He wears a small smile just as his default face seems to have all the time.

“I would… write.”

“Write?”

San nods. “I’m majoring it literature. I like putting my thoughts down. I like writing about the things that go on around me. I like watching movies and TV and I always pay attention to the dialogue. So I think I would… do something with that.”

Wooyoung’s smile grows like a flower.

“I like your answer, Sannie. But you do realize that you can write with or without shit lungs, right?”

“I know, I know. But I can’t get _far _with it, you know? I can’t live long enough to be a famous screenwriter or a best-selling author, or—”

San stops talking as soon as Wooyoung frowns.

“You talk as if you’re going to die tomorrow,” he says.

“I very well could.”

Wooyoung sighs. “And I thought we were getting somewhere,” he huffs, rolling back around.

_Wait wait wait no come back, you smelled really good._

“You realize there’s no age when it comes to that kind of thing, right? You’d be surprised with how much you can accomplish in a year or two.” Wooyoung turns his way and winks, sending a spark of something sweet and taunting down San’s esophagus and into it stomach. “And before you say you could die tomorrow, you technically could say that every day, and would you look at that, you’re still alive! Do you see how harmful it is, thinking as if tomorrow is your last day?”

San is aware of those not-so-motivational quotes. Healthy people who say that it’s important to live each day as if it’s your last. When he thinks about it, what does that even _mean_?

There’s no instruction manual telling anybody how to live their lives. If someone wants to spend their last day on Earth on their living room couch eating popcorn and crying their eyes out instead of blowing millions and doing backflips on the Great Wall of China, who’s to tell them not to?

If San wants to live each day and think as if tomorrow is his last, who’s to tell him not to?

Well.

Not that Wooyoung is telling him _not _to.

But Wooyoung _is _basically telling him that staying inside of his oxygen-filled bubble while thinking that everything is pointless because he could die tomorrow is really infringing on his happiness.

“You were alive yesterday and you’re alive today. You’ve been alive for what, twenty years? Twenty-one? Sannie, I think you’ve got a real bad prescription. You should get some new glasses. I recommend rose-tinted ones. Hell, I’ll even sign the check for them! At the bottom, in my fat fucking signature, bold letters and all, I’ll sign ‘reality.’ How does that sound?”

❀

The minutes tick by in the form of rippling water. Chirping insects and tweedling birds. A breeze warm enough to be spring instead of autumn. San has his eyes closed; he might be asleep, he might not be. He’s at peace now, breathing easily, so _tranquil. _His skin is goosebump-free, the earth plush against his back, softer than any memory foam he could ever rest his head upon. He can’t remember ever being in such bliss.

If this is what heaven is, he surely wouldn’t mind it. In fact, he’d really, really like it.

If this is what he gets to experience once he dies, he will welcome it with enthusiastically open arms.

“How do you feel, San?” Wooyoung whispers.

“Amazing,” San answers back. “Is this what being high feels like? I feel like this is what being high feels like.”

“Could be. I’ve never been high before.”

“Your guardians don’t grow weed?”

“They could if they wanted to, but I think they’d rather not have police show up at their door.” Wooyoung laughs. Trees rustle again. “I’m sure they can find some other mind altering substances to harvest though.”

“Shrooms?”

“Bingo.”

San laughs, _laughs_. Truly laughs. No holds barred. He clutches his stomach, imagining those two perfect human beings tripping on shrooms, their dainty little house spinning on a pottery wheel, psychedelic colors and shapes undulating around it.

“What’s so funny about shrooms?” Wooyoung asks, his own voice shrill with laughter.

“Funny,” San says to himself, gasping to catch his breath. It comes easily. “Oh, god, why _are _shrooms so funny?”

“Sannie, you okay? You need some extra oxygen?”

San laughs again, and that’s the thing, he doesn’t. He _doesn’t _need some extra oxygen.

His stomach hurts from laughing, but his lungs feel fine. He’s able to come down from the high, the high of _laughter_, something that he hasn’t had enough of in the time his lungs haven’t been lungs.

“I’m okay,” he says, taking a few more deep breaths to collect himself. “I’m very, very okay.”

Wooyoung breaks out into another smile. It spreads out like a garden across his face.

“That’s good, Sannie. That’s very, very good.”

❀

When the two get back to the clearing, the sun is just about to spread orange across the fading sky. Wooyoung leaves San with a suggestion.

“You go back to your dorm and write something, okay?” he says. “We can do, like, a writing exchange or something! I’m not really a good writer, so I think this will really benefit the both of us.”

“What are you thinking, exactly?”

“I write something, you write something. A poem, a story, a letter. Whatever. Write whatever _you _wanna write. And then next time we see each other, we’ll read what we have and give feedback. Or not. We could just read each other’s shit.”

“Why are you suggesting this?” San is cautious to ask the question innocuously.

“Because when you’re studying to do something you wanna do, chances are you won’t get to do what you wanna do whilst studying it,” Wooyoung says. “You’ll have to write a bunch of essays you don’t wanna write and read books you don’t wanna read. And it’s not like, homework or anything. You don’t _have_ to do it. I’m just merely suggesting it because you might not get another opportunity like this in the future, Sannie.” He winks.

San swallows the “I might not have a future” and nods instead.

“Okay.”

“Great!” Wooyoung beams. “I hope you write something, because I know I’m going to!”

San laughs. “I will, don’t worry.”

“Cool. Hey, text me, okay?” Wooyoung points a finger. “I’m not letting you go again, Choi San.”

“Whatever you say,” San says with a roll of his eyes.

“Oh, and here.” Wooyoung suddenly grabs one of San’s wrists and pulls his arm up. “Open.”

San opens his hand, and in his palm, Wooyoung places a bulb of tiny white flowers, close together as if sewn. Like the head of a cattail, but white instead. “Found this while you were sleeping. Put it in a glass of water and make sure you look at it when you write about me, okay?”

“Who says I’m gonna write about you?” San mocks, though he closes his fingers gently around the flowers and ignores the sudden increased magnitude of his heartbeat. He lowers his arm.

“A little birdie,” Wooyoung quips, winking.

“Just for that, I’m _not _going to write about you.”

“Well, maybe not tonight. But you _will _write about me someday.”

“Someday. Right.”

Wooyoung snickers and starts walking backwards, not once turning back to face away from San.

“Behave, now,” he says.

“Tell that to my lungs!”

“Behave, Choi San’s lungs!”

Wooyoung is getting farther away again. He’s waving. He waves for a long time.

San is the one who eventually looks away, down at the delicate mini-bouquet of flowers Wooyoung had bestowed, and when he looks back up, Wooyoung has his back turned, hands in his pockets, as his form disappears into the dusk.

❀

_How to Get High Without Doing Drugs: a Revelation by Choi San, Shitty Lungs Expert_

_Go outside. Make sure to bring yourself. Bring a friend, if you want._

_Lie down on the grass. Make sure it’s good grass, though._

_Close your eyes. Breathe, or at least try to. Try not to focus on if it hurts or not. Just do it, if you can._

_Smile. Smile, even if it hurts to do so. Think about nothing. Don’t think. Keep thinking about nothing. Nothing. Nada. Blackness. Actually, not even blackness. Straight up nothingness._

_Then pick a word. A word that you think sounds funny. Laugh at it. Keep laughing. Laugh until whatever was hurting you before is still there, but doesn’t hurt as much. Until your stomach hurts. Until you feel a good kind of pain that isn’t really pain._

_People say that “laughter is the best medicine.” After today, I kind of have to agree._

_I laughed at the word ‘shrooms’ for longer than one normally would. I don’t know why it was so funny to me. But I did, and I usually can’t laugh for too long, or that hard, because my lungs will start to hurt too much and I might start coughing._

_However, I am a minority. Most people can breathe. So, laugh. Laugh at a word, laugh at nothing, laugh at a funny joke. Find something to laugh at and let yourself laugh. Remember the feeling._

_The feeling of being high._

❀

San doesn’t own a glass, but Yunho _does _have a shotglass that’s big enough to fit the stem of the flower. He spends a good five minutes on the poem (how-to guide, whatever it would be classified as) and writes it down on a piece of college-ruled paper. Yunho’s on his bed, laptop in front of him.

“That’s a nice flower, where’d you get it?”

“Wooyoung and I hung out today. Went for a walk. He said he found it and wanted me to have it.”

“Aww, that’s cute,” Yunho coos, followed by a few kissy sounds.

“Don’t make me slap you with my tank.”

“That wouldn’t be good for either one of us now, would it?”

San scoffs and glances down at the tank. He pats the top of it.

“Hey, Yunho,” he says, “have you ever done drugs?”

“Uh… why?”

“What’s it like being high?”

Yunho chuckles. “Well, I don’t do it often since it’s not readily available, but yeah, I’ve smoked weed before. It depends on the person and the weed you smoke, but I personally get really happy. Really giggly. I start laughing at nothing, probably do something stupid. I feel both light and heavy at the same time. It’s a nice time.”

“Can I watch you get high sometime?”

“Where are all these questions coming from?” Yunho asks, amused more than anything else. “You’re not smoking weed, not on my watch.”

“I know. I just think, like, if I can’t experience it for myself, I’d want to see others experience it, you know? Mingi came over one night and got wine tipsy. So like, if you ever get high, let me know so I can watch.”

“Alright, San.”

“Thanks.”

San looks back down at his work and thinks about Yunho’s description. It sounds about right.

❀

When San wakes up the next morning, the soft hum of his oxygen tank and the radiator in their room makes for a blend of cacophonous noise that is harsh against his eardrums.

The sounds are only loud when—

It starts off small. Most of the time, it does. It starts off piano, crescendos into forte, then to double fortissimo, until San is curled in on himself and Yunho is jolting out of bed and joining him at his side with his water bottle ready for whenever he stops coughing.

“San, are you sure you don’t need to go to the doctor?” Yunho asks once he’s done.

San gulps down the water. It sloshes in his stomach but not his lungs. It doesn’t moisten the cracks or make them slippery. Nothing that’ll help him breathe, but it makes his throat hurt less.

“It’s normal,” San says.

Normal for someone who has the disease, sure. Normal for someone who doesn’t, absolutely not.

San can only imagine how Yunho feels. It’s not even eight in the morning, and he’s already had to wake up to the sound of his roommate’s alarming coughing episode.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Please don’t be,” Yunho replies, almost pleading. “Don’t be sorry for something you can’t control.”

_It could be controlled_, San thinks, _if I or whoever else has control of me would pull the plug already._

❀

“A side effect of dying?”

“That’s what the narrator says.”

“Is the narrator dying?”

“You mean the author?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then he doesn’t get to say that.”

Wooyoung snorts, closing the bright blue book. “I read this back in middle school and thought it was the most profound thing. I mean, technically you could say we’re all dying, but you’re just on another degree of dying.”

“Another degree of dying. Sounds like a cool name for a novel,” San inputs, nodding. “I mean, it's a nice book and all, but it just doesn’t really sit well with me.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I think there are some really valuable messages in it. I just thought I would share the whole ‘depression is a side effect of dying’ thing because you, well, you know.”

“I’m cynical, I get it,” San says.

“Well… yeah. Would you say you’re depressed too?”

San makes a face and shrugs. “I don’t think so, no. Besides, if depression is a side effect of dying and we’re all dying to some degree, wouldn’t that make everyone depressed?”

“What if we’re all different degrees of depressed?” Wooyoung suggests.

San’s eyes widen. “Wow.”

Wooyoung flips his midnight hair and sighs. “Call me a genius.”

“You’re a genius.”

“Thank you.”

They’re at the dining hall near San’s dorm. San doesn’t tell Wooyoung about his coughing fit from a few days ago. He hasn’t had one since, so he’s fine. He’s been fine.

“Are you sad a lot, San?” Wooyoung asks.

San shrugs.

“I don’t want to say depression is a side effect of dying, but it is real fucking difficult to be happy when your body knows it’s not going to last as long as the person next to you.”

San glances up at a few students that pass by. They’re all oxygen tank-less, young with bright clothing and probably bright futures. They have mostly clear skin and healthy physiques. They’re the ones who will outlive him, as will ninety-nine percent of the whole school, probably.

“To answer your question, no, I don’t think I’m sad or depressed. I just think differently, in a way that most people would see as sad or depressed because I’m, well, you know.”

Wooyoung nods, acknowledging him with a hum. “Well, let’s see your poem. You wrote one, right?”

“Yeah.” San reaches down to his backpack to pull out the piece of paper (now slightly crumpled) he’d written his how-to guide on. “Did _you _write one?”

“Of course I did,” Wooyoung says defensively, plucking out a carefully folded piece of paper from his jean pocket. “Now read.”

In a dramatic exchange, the two hand their papers to each other. San unfolds it meticulously. Wooyoung’s handwriting is atrocious.

_10 Things I Hate About Choi San_

“What the fuck, Wooyoung?”

Wooyoung giggles mischievously. “Just read.”

San groans and finds the scrawl again.

_10 Things I Hate About Choi San_

_1: He’s so fucking set on dying, man. How can one be so sure of what’s going to happen tomorrow? For all we know, **I **could be the one who dies tomorrow, not him._

_2: It took him so goddamn long to get straps for his tank. That must mean he’s indecisive, a procrastinator, lazy, or all three._

_3: He thinks his illness is all there is to him. You realize there’s a whole human being surrounding those lungs, right?_

San smiles.

_4: He TALKS like his illness is all there is to him. Tell me your hopes and dreams, San. Not the hypothetical ones that exist only if your lungs were healthy. Not the ones you wish you could achieve if they were realistic. Tell me ALL of them._

_5: He walks really slow, but I accredit that to his defective lungs so I give him a pass on that one._

The rest of the page is blank.

“Uh, Wooyoung,” San says, flipping the page. “There aren’t ten things on this list.”

“I know,” Wooyoung responds, not lifting his eyes from San’s. “I said I’d write something, but I didn’t say I’d finish it. I need to find more things to hate about you.”

In a bout of lighthearted annoyance, San folds the paper over and over, until he can’t possibly form any more creases, and chucks it at Wooyoung’s head. He doesn’t even bat an eyelash.

A few seconds later, Wooyoung finally nods and hands San’s work back. “I like it. Did you like mine?”

“Sure,” San says, picking up his page and folding it and tucking it back into his bag. “Except it wasn’t _finished_.”

“And I reiterate, I didn’t say I would _finish_,” Wooyoung argues, sticking his tongue out.

“Sheesh, Wooyoung, how _old _are you?”

“Plot twist, Sannie, I’m a nine-year-old stuck in a twenty-year-old’s body.”

And honestly, with the strangeness surrounding Wooyoung’s life, San wouldn’t be entirely surprised.

❀

San goes to his regularly scheduled appointment. It’s the third one he’s been to since he’s started university.

It’s a wash, rinse, repeat cycle. Check vitals. Weigh him. Draw blood. Listen to how shitty his lungs sound. Get his oxygen tank checked out. Ask him standard questions.

“How are you adjusting to university?” is a new one.

“It’s going well.”

“Make any new friends?”

“Yeah, they’re really supportive.”

“That’s good.”

And of course, she tells San to let the clinic know that if there’s anything he needs or if anything changes, to call them. San smiles and nods.

San takes the bus back to campus. It smells like metal and something musty, and he stares down at the silver specks of the platform and thinks about flowers instead.

❀

San gets his image scans in the mail a few days later, at his own request. He wants to start hanging them up in his room on a clothespin string, to display the progression of his disease (or, lack thereof). He even gets the ones from before. When he puts them side-by-side, he doesn’t see much of a difference, but then again, he’s no doctor.

He looks at the images and breathes and tries to feel each and every white particle. The air just seems to settle in his lungs, not spread like it’s supposed to, before he ultimately forces it back out. It feels like a clog. A massive clog that no plunger can remove.

When Yunho sees them for the first time, he winces. “Jesus, San… I’m no expert in radiology but even I can tell this isn’t good.”

“When I was younger, I thought the white was _supposed _to be there,” San says bitterly. “Wishful thinking, I guess.”

“You’re a miracle, San. I just hope it doesn’t get any whiter.”

San hopes so too.

Wooyoung comes over on a Friday night. Yunho is out again and there are four images on San’s wall. Wooyoung looks at them for several minutes completely silent, while San sits on Yunho’s bed and twiddles his thumbs.

“All that shit’s in you, huh?” Wooyoung mumbles.

“Yeah. I’m sure if you take my lungs out and look at them they’d look ten times worse.”

“Color tends to make things worse.” Wooyoung smirks. “Well, depends on how you look at it, I guess. Color certainly makes things more exciting.”

“Yeah.”

San glances over at his workspace on the desk. There sits Yunho’s shotglass, half filled with water, and the white flower has disappeared.

Wait.

The white flower is gone.

Just like the rose. Just like the azalea.

San had been too preoccupied to notice. Unless Yunho took it out, which San doubts he did, then it should still be there.

“What’s wrong?” Wooyoung asks.

“Just... ah, I thought I put your flower in that glass right there.” San points at it. “I didn’t take it out… maybe it was Yunho.”

“Ah.”

An uneasy feeling shoots up his chest.

_Why isn’t the flower there anymore?_

“It should… be there…”

_Why isn’t it there anymore? Why did that rose disappear between my fingers? Where did the azalea go?_

Sweat erupts from the pores on his hairline.

_Wooyoung_—

“H-hey, San, you alright?”

“Yeah,” San says. It comes out as a weak gasp.

_No, please, not now. Not now._

He grips the edge of Yunho’s bed, his swollen fingertips numb and throbbing at the same time. He inhales through his mouth, or tries to, but the air gets lodged in his throat, and he coughs. And coughs.

Starts off small.

His fingers feel like they could bleed. There’s pressure everywhere, from the tips and bends of his body, to the innards and blood in his system; the air is going in but it’s _not coming out_.

_Breathe, San. Breathe. Breathe._

He coughs again, and the scale tips to one side. The rocks in his lungs crash together, sparking, igniting, knocking against the delicate tissue and sending metallic lava up his throat. It tastes unpleasant.

“San, h-hey—”

“Don’t… d-don’t t-touch me!”

“San, please!”

There are hands encapsulating his wrists, prying them off of his chest. He needs them there, he needs to hold it, needs to hold the breath there. He can’t do it if Wooyoung’s trying to move them, he—

There’s something against his feverish forehead, gentle puffs of air against his lips as he coughs.

He coughs. And coughs.

And breathes. And breathes.

_Breathe._

“Breathe, San. Breathe for me, okay?”

Wooyoung’s hands cup his face, his supple skin so, so close, flowery scent wrapping around him once more.

San inhales through his nose. He can smell it again, smell the oasis, smell _Wooyoung. _He exhales through his mouth, it doesn’t hurt, it flows out without getting caught in the cracks.

Wooyoung coughs, and San opens his eyes. They hurt from being clamped shut.

“Wooyoung—”

Wooyoung coughs again, removing his hands from San’s face and instead shielding his mouth as he lets out another cough into them. He holds him there, much like San would hold his hands at his chest.

“Wooyoung?” San tries.

He breathes. In and out.

It’s easy again. Just like it was at the oasis. Just like it was when San saw Wooyoung just a few ways away, bent down at a flower, smiling.

Wooyoung’s eyes are closed, hands cupped over his nose and mouth, but nothing, _nothing _could shroud the delicate blue light traveling up his neck. San can’t tell where it starts, but he watches it appear from beneath his shirt collar, up his neck, over his jaw and cheek, and—

“Wooyoung?”

When the boy finally removes his hands from his face, a pale blue flower with two leaves at its sides rests in his palms. He swallows, clears his throat, then swallows again. San’s mouth drops wide open.

“Wooyoung… what’s that? What did you _do_?”

San gawks at him with wide, panicked eyes, his gratefulness still present but merely simmering in his vocal cords. Right now, he’s looking at this flower, the size of one of Wooyoung’s palms, that has seemingly appeared from nowhere.

Wooyoung chuckles sheepishly.

“Ah, it’s… oh man, I should really just tell you, huh? I think it’s about time I did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/galaxysangs)


	5. chrysanthemum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy holidays everybody! here is my gift to you: some more angst :)
> 
> and side note: this is the second time i've changed the summary lmao i think i'll keep it at this one; when i first started writing this fic, i didn't have a well thought out summary so i just kinda rolled with what i had. now that i've had time to ruminate, i think i'm gonna settle for this one. sorry about all the confusion!

“A fairy.”

“Yup.”

“You’re… a fairy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like. Those little woodland creatures with wings.”

“Uh… minus the wings. And hey, I’m only a little shorter than you.”

San stares at Wooyoung incredulously, eyebrows knitted together in utter confusion.

“Fairies come in all shapes and sizes. Some have wings,” he continues on. “Hongjoong-hyung and Seonghwa-hyung are fairies too.”

Well, that totally explains it. It explains how oddly cottagecore their house is, how they look otherworldly perfect despite being who-knows-how-many years older than Wooyoung. Even the photos that, looking back on it, look like they were taken in completely different eras. Their old-fashioned mannerisms, the way that they speak, their strange affinity for nature.

The fact that they’re fairies explains everything!

“Uh… huh.”

It’s getting hard to breathe again. Reality crashing down is a heavy weight on San’s lungs.

He looks at the flower sitting prettily in the palms of Wooyoung’s hands, back up at Wooyoung, then back at the flower. The light emanating from his throat became… _ that_?

How else could San begin to explain such a phenomenon?

“So… that flower…”

“Oh, this. Yeah. It’s a power of mine. I can create flowers.” Wooyoung smiles as he hands it out for San to take. Hesitantly, he does. “But what just happened was something different. That flower is more of a product of conversion.”

“Conversion?”

Wooyoung nods. “So… you were having a coughing attack, yeah? And I used my power to stop it, but during the process, energy is released and my body produces a flower. It’s random, like, you never know what flower would come out.”

San runs his thumbs along the petals, smooth and dainty. It feels like it weighs nothing.

“Look, San, seriously. Please don’t tell anybody about me or Hongjoong and Seonghwa. Humans don’t know we exist. We kind of live among you guys as equals, and we don’t want to be found out.”

“Wait wait wait, what about Yeosang? That guy in the spring? Is he one too?”

“Oh, him.” Wooyoung giggles. “He’s a water nymph. Completely different. There are a lot of fae creatures out there, not just fairies.”

“So do vampires and werewolves exist?”

All amusement drains from Wooyoung’s face at the question. “What? It’s a valid question when you find out that fairies exist,” San says defensively, shrugging.

Wooyoung sighs, a soft smile reappearing. “Well, if they do, I’m unaware. The fae realm consists of fairies, nymphs, pixies, shapeshifters, things like that. Though you can’t see pixies because they’re basically microscopic, and nymphs are masters of camouflage. As for shapeshifters… you never know if they’re walking around.”

San stares blankly as the confusion simmers in him. He’s trying to wrap his head around it. As much as he wants to tell Wooyoung that everything he just told him is insane and impossible because _ fairies don’t fucking exist_, then what was the scene that just unfolded before him? He can’t think of any _ human _explanation for that light in Wooyoung’s throat, or how the flower appeared out of nowhere.

“Prove it,” San requests.

“Huh?”

“Prove it… again. I… I know that what just happened can’t really be scientifically explained but I need more than that.”

Wooyoung lets out a snorting laugh, shaking his head as he holds out his right hand. “Here. See if you can explain this.”

The veins in Wooyoung’s palm almost seem to glow, a golden light instead of blue. It starts from his wrists, branching out to the rest of the lines in his hand like roots of a tree, and San expects a flower to magically appear from the light, but instead, the gold fades into a dark brown, an almost eerie sight. As if Wooyoung’s veins darken to become the roots themselves.

And from those roots sprouts a flower from the center of his hands. First the leaves, and then the body, which looks similar to the blue one, just gold instead. The dark roots inside his hand fade, and he plucks the flower from the center. There’s a black dot left on his skin where the flower bloomed.

Wooyoung hands San the flower with a proud smirk. “So? You wanna explain that to me?”

San can’t deny it. He’s holding two very real, live flowers that Wooyoung created straight from his body.

“H-how? How do you… what is…”

Wooyoung chuckles. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions. I can try to answer them all.”

So San asks about all the abnormalities he’s witnessed since he’s met Wooyoung, starting with the very first sight. Wooyoung, kneeling by a flower, seemingly immersed in it.

Nature speaks a language, apparently. An unspoken one, one without words or letters or syllables, one that Wooyoung can’t even begin to explain. But he can converse with nature—plants, animals, anything _ alive. _He understands them, and they understand him. In the simplest terms, he can talk to plants and animals.

Fairies do not age. Hongjoong and Seonghwa being walking proof of that, at _ two hundred years old. _ San’s mouth drops wide open at that. It explains their old-fashioned mannerisms and taste in interior decorating and the old photographs, but _ holy shit. _They’re two hundred years old.

“Then how old are _ you_?” San asks.

“Twenty. Really.” Wooyoung snickers. “And yes, the story about Hongjoong and Seonghwa finding me in a basket is very true. I was abandoned by my real parents, whoever they are. Don’t know, don’t really care. But Hongjoong and Seonghwa found me, recognized me as being one of their kind, and took me in.”

“How do fairies even obtain citizenship?”

“Fairies are everywhere, Sannie. They’re in healthcare, governments, you name it. Humans may not know about fairies, but fairies know about other fairies and help with the assimilation of both kinds.”

Government officials who can give names, statuses, birth certificates, and anything that fairies would need to live amongst humans. The notion is mind-boggling. To think, there could be a fairy running a country.

“So… do fairies die?” San asks. “Do they… get sick?”

Wooyoung shakes his head. “Fairies don’t get sick, but they can die, yes. From extremely old age, or, like, having their heads cut off. But because fairies have exceptional healing capabilities, they’re really hard to kill.”

“Healing abilities, huh?”

When San thinks about it… maybe Wooyoung’s presence is the reason he can breathe so easily.

A natural healing aura, Wooyoung calls it. Where organisms surrounding him are soothed, put at bay. He even says he can bring small organisms back from the dead, though it does take up a substantial amount of energy to do so.

“Can’t bring back a rotting corpse,” Wooyoung says. “But say, if a small plant dies, I can restore it to its healthiest state. I can bring back dead bugs, really tiny animals, things like that. Though, like I said, it takes up energy, so I need a really good nap after doing that.”

Makes sense, San thinks. He can imagine it’s no easy feat to bring something back from the dead.

“Any more questions?” Wooyoung asks.

_ Just one. _

“What were the flowers saying to you, the night we met?”

A reminiscent smile spreads on Wooyoung’s face.

“They were saying, look to your left, Wooyoung. There’s your new friend.”

❀

And so, San starts the portion of his life that involves keeping Wooyoung’s secret under wraps. It’s not difficult, really; his friendships with Yunho and Mingi don’t really involve explaining strange occurrences since everything about Wooyoung is very human despite him being able to create life from his hands. Really, it’s not that bad.

The trees have inevitably changed color, but that doesn’t stop Wooyoung from taking San down those winding paths, orange and red and brown crackling beneath their feet as they walk. Sometimes Wooyoung will bring blankets for them to wrap themselves up in, and he’ll spread one out so they can lie beneath the setting sun, listening to the trickling of water.

“You know,” Wooyoung says one day. He has his hands positions behind his head, back against the ground, legs bent. “I was looking up your condition. Pulmonary fibrosis.”

“Yeah?” San almost laughs.

“The life expectancy is three to five years, San. Did you know that?”

San chews the inner lining of his lips.

_ “The life expectancy with pulmonary fibrosis varies. It is possible to slow the progression of the disease with proper treatment.” _

_ “B-but can’t something be done? Something more long-term?” _

_ “A lung transplant, but of course, it comes with risks. There is no way of telling how San’s body will react, if it will reject the new lungs or the treatments that proceed the operation. And with new lungs, San will have to be on immunosuppressants for the rest of his life, which may also come with complications that could potentially harm his body in other areas. However, with all of that being said, plenty of patients who undergo lung transplants can live a healthy life after the procedure, more than just three to five years.” _

_ “But there’s no guarantee.” _

_ “Unfortunately, Mrs. Choi, no. There is no guarantee with any disease.” _

“Don’t believe everything the internet tells you,” San mumbles.

Wooyoung shifts to his side, looking in San’s direction. “How long have you been living with it?”

“Since I was thirteen, about.”

Wooyoung’s eyes widen. “San, that’s _ seven years_.”

“Well, yeah.”

“You’re a walking miracle.”

San rolls his eyes and thinks of when Yunho had told him the same thing. A miracle.

No, if San were truly a miracle, he could breathe properly and change the world.

“Treatment slows the progression of the disease. That’s why I have my handy dandy tank and take a bunch of medication. Plus, I’m still young. Life expectancy isn’t just three to five years for someone like me.”

“See, _ there’s _some optimism!” Wooyoung exclaims brightly, rolling over until his arm brushes with San’s and his face is mere inches away. San’s breath hitches in his throat at the sudden closeness. “I mean… I’m glad to hear that your life expectancy isn’t just three to five years…”

San sighs. “Do you see now why I talk as if I’m gonna die soon? Because really, I could. I’m gonna die before you, obviously, and I’m gonna die before Yunho and Mingi. This disease is going to kill me and nothing can stop it. Not even a lung transplant.”

“Why don’t you get one?” Wooyoung asks.

“My mom was too uncertain,” San says. “Everybody was. My condition isn’t, like, so severe to the point where I would need one immediately. I’d be put on a waiting list, and who knows how long that could take? I don’t know, Wooyoung. At the time, there were so many words being thrown at me and I was so scared and didn’t know what to do, and neither did my parents, so… ultimately, they just decided to stick with regular treatments to slow the progression.”

Wooyoung makes a face, something between horror and disgust. “If a lung transplant would save your life, why not get one?”

“Because it might _ not_, Wooyoung.”

“Well it _ might_. There are two sides to every coin, you know.” Wooyoung huffs and flips back onto his back, and San finds himself wishing he hadn’t opened his mouth.

To stop being so cynical. Because Wooyoung isn’t; Wooyoung is the embodiment of sunshine and the sun itself, there even when it’s not there, omnipresent, hot and blinding. San may as well be made of stone in comparison.

“Don’t you give up on me,” Wooyoung says, quieter this time.

San sighs. _ I gave up a long time ago_, he wants to say. Because yes, he knows that he can go for it, he can apply to get a lung transplant and wait however long he needs to and risk his body rejecting a new pair of lungs in favor of living with the ones he already has. He knows that he can _ try_, try to fight, try to live his best life with the cards he’s been dealt, but no matter what, he will always be a walking example of disease, medicated and reliant, and _ that _is something he never wanted to be in the first place.

So what is worse: to die, or to live in constant uncertainty?

San doesn’t let himself think about that too much.

So he replies with, “Alright,” knowing how half-assed it sounds and how Wooyoung is probably going to see right through him. But Wooyoung doesn’t say anything else, because he knows San is too cynical for his own good.

“Life is beautiful,” Wooyoung whispers to the crisp autumn wind.

He holds out his palm and conjures a violet flower with dozens of rows of small, dainty petals, circled around the golden-white center. And he offers it to San, just like every other flower.

“Seonghwa-hyung made that azalea for you, you know.”

“What flower is this?” San asks, twirling the tiny stem around in his hand.

Wooyoung shrugs. “Beats me. I don’t know the names of flowers.”

“You’re kind of a shitty fairy,” San jokes.

“Trust me, I know.” Wooyoung still cracks a smile.

They stay at the oasis until sundown, and then they trudge back to civilization where Wooyoung takes San back to his house. It feels bigger upon entering; maybe Hongjoong and Seonghwa did some refurbishing or rearranging or maybe San got smaller. They’re in the kitchen cooking up a storm, a familiar sight to San’s eyes. Upon Wooyoung and San’s entrance, they turn and smile.

Before they can say anything, however, Wooyoung blurts, “San knows we’re fairies.”

Their smiles disappear. Seonghwa lets out a heavy sigh, Hongjoong makes a disgruntled noise and turns back to chopping vegetables on the cutting board.

“We will talk later, Wooyoung,” Seonghwa says, his voice low and firm. “Is San staying for dinner?”

“Um… if it’s okay?” Wooyoung tries.

And just like that, Seonghwa is smiling again, soft and subtle. He nods and Wooyoung claps with glee, taking San’s hand and tugging him along.

“Now that you have your straps, I wanna show you where all the magic happens. Literally.”

“San—” Hongjoong interjects.

“Hyung, he already knows we’re fairies. Him seeing the apothecary isn’t going to change anything,” Wooyoung argues, already opening the door that leads to the downstairs area he refused to take him down before.

San is instantly overwhelmed with the earthy aroma of herbs upon reaching the bottom step. It’s considerably warmer, the environment being basically the equivalent of a greenhouse. Wooden shelves line every single wall, potted plants dangle from hangers strung to the ceiling, vibrant green leaves spilling everywhere. Glass bottles containing multicolored liquids sit upon the shelves along with various gardening tools.

In the center of the left section of the basement-apothecary is a massive pot, something like a cauldron, the ones San has only seen in movies. It’s empty, its big black pit spotless. In the corner is a miniature garden dug into the ground, tiny stems and leaves poking out from the crumbly soil. And the right section of the basement is what looks to be more of a library, the shelves containing seemingly endless rows and columns of dusty books instead of glass vials and bottles. There’s a table in the middle, a pile of books stacked high and a few scientific instruments strewn about randomly.

“This is the apothecary. Hongjoong and Seonghwa make potions down here. Herbal mixes infused with fairy magic that are used for a whole bunch of things. You know that tea Seonghwa made you? It was one of the potions from down here. Magic tea.”

“Do you know what it was for?”

“Exactly what Seonghwa told you it was for. Strength. Most potions are used for that sort of thing. Vitality, fertility, energy, even weight loss!”

“Do they sell these potions?”

Wooyoung nods. “Yup! Only the really weak ones are sold on the human market, though. The stronger ones are reserved for fairies themselves. If you wanna think about it like this, it’s like drug dealing. Just not illegal.”

San laughs at that. “Fairies come in all sorts,” Wooyoung continues. “Powers vary and come with time and experience. Hongjoong and Seonghwa are fairly old, so their powers are great. While healing is a power shared among all fairies, only some are able to condense their magic into physical concoctions like potions.”

“Is that what you’re doing to me, Wooyoung?” San asks. “Healing me?”

“You could say that,” Wooyoung says nonchalantly. “It’s my natural healing aura, what can I say?” He grins widely. “I can’t condense my power like they can, though. I have my aura, and then I have my healing power and very limited resurrection power.”

“This is nuts.”

Wooyoung only smiles. “No, San, this is an apothecary.”

San snorts and swats at Wooyoung’s shoulder, shaking his head in mock offense as he ascends the stairs again, effortlessly.

❀

Dinner is awkward, to say the least, because now San knows their secret when he’s not supposed to. He wonders if there are _ any _humans, any at all, that know about the existence of fairies. He can’t be the only one.

To make up for it, he stuffs himself until he can’t eat anymore. It’s not a difficult feat, considering their cooking is phenomenal (whether it’s courtesy of fairy magic or not, San isn’t sure). He leans back and lets out a heavy, sharp exhale as his digestive system starts chipping away at the food, which isn’t much in comparison considering his appetite isn’t exactly up there, but he’s certain they can tell.

“So, San,” Seonghwa says, his voice much more solemn this time around. “I’m sure Wooyoung has told you this already, but it is crucial that you don’t tell anybody about us or the existence of fairies.”

San nods. “Of course.”

“The Fairy Council doesn’t want to get involved in human affairs as much as possible. If word gets out, _ technically _something can be done, but it requires massive amounts of magic and energy that shouldn’t have to be used in the first place.”

“Like… a mass memory wipe? Is that something fairies can do?”

“Our magic itself doesn’t. However, our magic combined with other elements from nature can ensure memory erasure, but of course, that comes with the risk of wiping _ too much._” Seonghwa sighs. “As far as I know, the Council hasn’t had to resort to that. We keep our powers under wraps very well.”

San briefly glances over at Wooyoung, who’s pushing around roasted vegetables with his fork, eyes down and head slumped. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise,” San says with as much conviction as he can muster.

He forgoes the immediate cynical thought that invades his head.

“Wooyoung trusts you, so we are inclined to trust you as well,” Hongjoong says, tone similar to Seonghwa’s. He gives San a reassuring smile, less solemn than Seonghwa’s overall demeanor. “But enough about that. How have you been, San?”

San shrugs. “Nothing much has changed. My lungs are still crappy. Still take loads of medication for it. School is okay.”

“But your condition has not worsened?”

“It’s been pretty stable. Has been for a while. I get the occasional coughing episode but that’s a normal occurrence.”

Hongjoong’s face suddenly lights up. “Ah, I believe I have something for that! I’ll be right back.” He gets up and disappears down the hall, and San hears the familiar creaking of wood as he descends the stairs. He returns with a normal plastic water bottle with a rose gold liquid inside that almost seems to shimmer. “This potion will help soothe your symptoms when they occur.”

“Hongjoong, that’s—”

“Only one sip is all it takes.” Hongjoong cuts Seonghwa off, still smiling as he hands the bottle to San.

San side-glances Seonghwa, who’s watching the scene with apprehensive eyes. “Uh…”

“It’s not poisonous,” Seonghwa confirms. “But it _ is _one of our more complex potions that takes a long time and a lot of magic to make.”

San’s mouth falls open. “Oh, gosh, I couldn’t take it then—”

“I insist.” Hongjoong urges the bottle into San’s hands. “We have a few more bottles downstairs. It’s fine.”

“They sell fast,” Seonghwa mumbles, then sighs. “Well, if Hongjoong insists.”

San looks at Wooyoung again. He has discomfort written all over him.

In the end, San accepts the gift, tucking it into the side pocket of his tank pack. Hopefully Yunho doesn’t find it and think it’s alcohol.

Later that night, while Hongjoong explains the apothecary in more depth, showing San around and pointing out all the knick-knacks and potions linine the shelves, Seonghwa and Wooyoung remain upstairs, having that “talk.” Hongjoong made sure to close the door, muffling the voices on both ends.

“I have a question,” San says.

“Yes?”

“Wooyoung told me that you and Seonghwa are two hundred years old.”

Hongjoong laughs at that, sucking in air through his teeth. “Ah, yes. He likes to remind us that we’re ancient, yet there are fairies who are a thousand years old out there. But yes, Seonghwa and I are around that age.”

“How did you two meet?”

“Way back when, fairies had covens,” Hongjoong says. “In other words, they lived together, in clusters exclusively reserved for fairies. But as time went on and more fairies were born, it became more and more difficult to stay hidden from the human world, which was when the Council decided to disperse the covens and send fairies to live amongst humans. Seonghwa and I met during the pandemonium and the uncertainty of it all. We came from different covens, practically orphaned at a relatively young age… twenty-one, perhaps? But fairies can sense other fairies, which is how we came to know each other.”

San smiles and thinks about the two and how much they must have been through together. “So that’s how you knew Wooyoung was a fairy from the get-go.”

“Indeed. It was such a peculiar sight, and a foolish, risky decision on the parents’ part. It was fortunate that we were the ones who discovered him. Who knows what would have happened if Wooyoung grew up in a human family? He wouldn’t know the extent of his power or how to use it. It was good we were there to guide him.”

San pauses for a moment and ponders the original question he had in mind, but it slips right out of him.

“What has it been like, living for so long?”

And as if Hongjoong could sense the intent behind the question, his face falls flat. “San…”

“I want to know,” San says, devoid of emotion, because _ this _is what he’s used to.

The cynicism of it all, the impending doom, and the curiosity of life that he won’t get to live.

Hongjoong’s lips flatten as he sighs. “Well, if you truly wish to know… Seonghwa and I have been together since we were about twenty-one. We’ve traveled the world. Been to every continent minus Antarctica. Seonghwa can speak fifteen languages. We’ve lived through wars. Seen things destroyed and built. There is a lot that can happen in one lifetime, let alone two.”

San nods, trying to imagine it all. What life must have been like for someone with the same disease as him without the technology to mitigate it. The life expectancy must have been a lot less than three to five years.

He may be fortunate to live this long, in this day and age. But that doesn’t stop his inevitable fate.

“Since fairies were thrown into the human world… our population has declined,” Hongjoong mumbles. “Not so much to the point that we are near extinction, but the fairy race is certainly lesser in number. It is difficult to kill a fairy, but not impossible.” San winces, thinking of the wars he learned about in history class. “Finding Wooyoung was like finding treasure. We are lucky to have him. I’m sure you feel the same.”

San can’t help but chuckle, and he smiles again because yes, he is lucky.

Very, very lucky.

“Wooyoung takes me to this spot in the woods.”

“Ah, yes, the oasis.”

“What exactly is that place?”

“A place that normally only fairies have access to,” Hongjoong explains. “The place is shrouded by fairy magic, invisible to humans, and only fae creatures may enter. Though, because I imagine Wooyoung shares some of his magic with you, you are able to enter with him.”

“There’s a guy there, I met him once… Yeosang? I think?”

“Yes, an old friend of ours. He’s a water nymph that lives at the bottom of that spring.”

“What are water nymphs?”

“Well, nymphs are fae creatures that embody an element of nature. Water and wood nymphs are the ones most commonly and heavily associated with fairies, and are the only ones I have personally come across. Yeosang is the guardian of that oasis. His very existence is protecting that space.”

A small gasp escapes San. So, he’d met the overseer of that space. Good to know.

“I understand it must be a lot to take in,” Hongjoong goes on, leaning back against the table in the study section of the basement. “I’m honestly quite surprised you didn’t question the entire… finding Wooyoung in a basket story.”

“To be honest, I did,” San admits, chuckling. “But, like… I guess I didn’t wanna pry.”

_ I didn’t want to risk losing him. _

“It’s his life, not mine. I didn’t want to invade or anything.”

Hongjoong laughs, head tilting back.

“Oh, San. If anything, Wooyoung is the one who invited you in.”

❀

Back at the dorm, Yunho is in, doing some homework on his side under a bright light, headphones plugged into his laptop. He doesn’t even notice San and Wooyoung come in, and San has to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention.

“Oh, hey! Where’ve you two been?” he asks, smiling brightly.

“Just out and about. Going for walks. It’s important that I get my exercise, even with shit lungs,” San jokes, heading for his bed. “Don’t mind us, we’re just gonna do some studying together.”

“Uh-huh.” San pretends he doesn’t hear the suggestiveness in his tone or the smirk he gives them when he turns back around.

While Wooyoung studies for calculus, San studies for history. They sit in silence, though a few lyrics from Yunho’s headphones manage to breach the hard plastic. Finals are just around the corner, and while San’s workload is considerably light due to… obvious circumstances, he still finds himself just as stressed as everyone else.

But he figures, if he bombs the test, it wouldn’t matter much. He’s sure Wooyoung would hate him for saying that, so he keeps his mouth shut.

When the time comes for Wooyoung to head out, he takes San’s hand in his. It’s as if he can feel the blood from Wooyoung’s veins flowing into his.

And in his palm sits a delicate purple flower.

“Purple’s my favorite color,” San whispers, barely audible as Yunho is still sitting a mere few feet away, thankfully still turned away.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Wooyoung whispers back, standing up from San’s bed. “I’ll see you around!” he says louder, to both San and Yunho.

“Ah, have a good night!” Yunho replies with that same bright smile, waving as Wooyoung leaves and shuts the door behind him. As soon as the door is closed, Yunho gives San a _ look. _

“What?” San asks.

“Are you two a thing?”

“Wh—no! No, we aren’t! What makes you think that?”

“You two spend an awful lot of time together. Like, I come back and you’re gone and I can immediately assume you’re with him. Seriously, do you like him?” Yunho has slid his headphones off his ears, and it sits resting behind his neck.

San’s eyes narrow. He sits back down on the bed, sneaking the flower behind his back, obstructing it from view. “I don’t… know.”

Yunho raises an eyebrow. “You don’t… know.”

“Well, I _ like _him as a person, as a friend, yeah.”

“Oh, come _ on_, San. You know what I mean. Do you want to date him? Maybe get in his pants, if that’s something that’s doable for somebody in your shoes?”

San nearly chokes on air. Is it doable? Yes, San imagines so, though he would certainly lose every ounce of air in his lungs if _ that _ were to happen to him. He tries to picture it, somebody running their hands down his body, touching all the right spots, caressing him lovingly and pressing kisses into the thin lining of his skin, on his ribs, _ lower_. He’s so fucking _ skinny. _But he tries to think of someone who would love him despite all of that, despite the fact that he’ll die before them and looks like a walking skeleton sometimes and wakes up in the middle of the night coughing like he’ll hack up a lung—

“Uh… San?”

San blinks rapidly, shuddering. “What? What?”

“You spaced out for a minute. What, you fantasizing about him now?”

San swallows.

Strangely enough, that “someone” appearing in his vision looked a lot like Wooyoung.

“N-no!” It comes out pathetically.

“Yeah, okay.” Yunho snorts with a very conspicuous eye roll, but he doesn’t turn back to his work. He continues to stare at San, almost expectantly.

“Come on, Yunho, be realistic,” San says, looking away.

“Realistic as in cynical?” Yunho asks, because he knows too. San is just _ that _predictable.

“Oh, that’s not fair.” San pouts.

“I’m sure you were gonna say something like, ‘I’m gonna die so what’s the point of dating?’ And, like, come on, dude. Yeah, you might be dying, but don’t you wanna _ live _before you die?”

San stares back blankly. Nobody’s ever asked him that before, and he certainly hasn’t asked himself that. But then again, it must be so easy for them to spew words like that, because _ they’re _ the ones who are living and have all the chances and opportunities to live. _ They’re _ the ones who get to live through wars and seeing things being built and breaking down. _ They’re _the ones who truly get to live before they die.

But alas, he can’t hate Yunho for asking him that, because he _ knows _ Yunho has a point. He knows Wooyoung has a point. _ All _of them have a point, but San just doesn’t see it like that.

Death is so close, impending, looming above his head. It’s teasing him, beckoning him closer. It floods his brain with thoughts of the end and _ only _the end. The true mastermind of his brain, the epicenter of everything cynical that lives within him.

San’s fingers pinch the petals gently. They’re so _ smooth_. He can’t believe Wooyoung created it with his own hand.

He’s still breathing. He still has working eyes and working limbs and a functioning brain. He still has _ life _ in him.

“You know that saying, ‘live like you’re dying?’ I personally think it’s bullshit, because there are so many ways to die and so many ways to be in pain and not everyone has the privilege of living like it’s their last day on earth. Plus, it’s the _ living _who say that as a means of motivation. You know what I say? I say, to hell with life and death. I’m doing whatever the hell I want, living or dying.”

San can’t help but laugh at the way Yunho proclaims it like something out of a Shakespearan drama.

“In all seriousness, you’re alive _ now_, Sannie. So live _ now_, so you can die knowing you lived.”

San smiles softly, releasing the petals from his clubbed fingers.

He supposes he could try.

❀

When finals end, there is one _ final _final, and that’s the dance recital of Yunho and Mingi’s dance crew. San hadn’t been able to see any of the other performances at his parents’ and even Yunho’s behests, but he finally got the approval to go.

The performance is at an auditorium twenty minutes away from campus. Wooyoung accompanies him with his natural healing aura and all, making the bus ride smooth sailing. One thing San notices, however, is that Wooyoung’s fingers continuously brush up against the back of his hand—whether it’s consciously or unconsciously, San doesn’t know, but he doesn’t entirely _ mind. _ It’s almost reassuring, having someone like Wooyoung so close to him, and not _ just _because of his natural healing aura.

It can’t just be his natural healing aura, because that doesn’t explain the butterflies dancing around in his stomach whenever he so much as _ thinks _ about Wooyoung. If Wooyoung’s aura healed _ that_, he’d be all set and everything would be fine, but he worries now that when Wooyoung holds his hand, they’ll clam up, and San doesn’t understand _ why _they do that. Or when his heart begins to pick up speed when Wooyoung is near. Surely it’s not the pulmonary fibrosis.

The auditorium is bustling with people when they arrive, the closeness of everybody spurring anxiety in San already. He hasn’t been in a place this packed since the first day he arrived at university, and he remembers how he’d gotten so exhausted that he had to sit down and Yunho sat down with him and everything felt so awful because he just brought Yunho down and—

“Hey.”

San blinks and Wooyoung’s hand slides in his. “Come on, there are some seats over here.” Wooyoung motions his head to the very left side of the auditorium, where indeed, there are more unoccupied seats. “What’s more important, Sannie, your health or a front row seat? Don’t be silly.”

It’s almost as if Wooyoung read his mind. Is that another fairy perk?

They sit down in the middle of the leftmost section, away from the majority, most of which sit in the center section. Wooyoung holds San’s hand the entire time, and San is so flustered that he can’t even begin to focus on if they’re receiving dirty looks or not. Not that he cares all that much to begin with.

But Wooyoung keeps his eyes focused straight ahead on the dimly-lit stage, waiting for the show to start.

And then, an energetic voice booms from the surround-sound speakers, announcing the dance team’s entrance as the curtain parts and the stage explodes in blue. The audience roars, some already standing on their feet as they clap with loud applause. Wooyoung remains seated, face illuminated by blue, clapping passionately. Up on the stage stands the two tallest dancers, Yunho and Mingi, among others, dressed in matching black tracksuits and baseball caps.

Some loud hip-hop song San doesn’t recognize starts blaring from the speakers and the dance routine begins. San has never seen a dance performance so up close and personal before, and to say it’s breathtaking isn’t even an overstatement. Just _ watching _numerous bodies glide and flip across the stage is tiring, the sheer volume of the music sending immense shockwaves up San’s feet and all the way to his heart. It beats to the rhythm, pumping blood and air to the rest of his body at an inconceivable pace.

And still, Wooyoung has not let go of his hand.

Among all the chaos and clamor of the performance, San can _ breathe. _

San had never seen Yunho dance before, and now, it feels as if his eyes have been blessed. Yunho may have bragged a little bit in the beginning, but for good fucking reason. San can’t keep his eyes off of him, the way he effortlessly executes the most intricate moves and struts across the stage like he owns it. Mingi is up there too, a dynamic duo that couldn’t move more perfectly in sync. Perhaps San is a bit biased considering they’re his friends, but they really do shine the brightest up there.

With pride hot and heavy surging through his body, San stands up and joins the crowd in its rowdy cheers, letting go of Wooyoung’s hand and hollering with the rest. Wooyoung stands up too, doesn’t reach for San’s hand, but instead lets out an ear-piercing shriek, a supersonic boom that is louder than everything else in the room.

San looks at him with the most happiness he’s felt in so long, and his heart and lungs swell.

Iridescent blue bouncing off the golden perfection that is his skin, eyes hidden beneath their lids as his entire face is locked in an open wide smile, beauty and life _ personified_—San thinks that Wooyoung may be the most beautiful creature he has ever laid eyes upon.

Wooyoung turns to look at him too and San’s heart nearly stops.

“They’re _ so good_, Sannie!” he screams, grabbing both of San’s hands, clasping them together. “How do you feel?”

_ Happy. Energized. Elated. Ecstatic. _

_ Alive. _

“I feel great!” he shouts back.

Wooyoung lets go of one of San’s hands, keeping the other locked with his as he raises both of their arms up and waves them.

When the performance has finished, San swears an eardrum bursts, but he’s still smiling to the point where his face is starting to hurt, but he’d choose this kind of pain over the pain that wracks his lungs any day.

They all convene outside the hall. Yunho and Mingi are still in their tracksuits, foreheads damp from sweat, but they enthusiastically suggest they all get milkshakes despite the cold, and who is San to say no to a creamy delicious strawberry milkshake with whipped cream and a cherry on top?

When they reach the creamery, San can barely feel the cannula in his nose. The tank weighs nothing. He gulps down his milkshake and gets a brain freeze but he laughs it off and they laugh with him. Wooyoung puts his arm around San at one point as they’re all talking, and San leans into it unknowingly.

Yunho and Mingi ramble on aimlessly about their wild adventures in such a close-knit dance group, using exaggerated hand gestures and ridiculous vocal inflections, and San finds himself half-listening. It’s hard to, when the adrenaline is finally coming down and he sinks further into Wooyoung’s one-armed embrace and the sudden awareness that he feels _ alive. _

While the dancing duo is absorbed in their conversation, Wooyoung leans in and asks, “Are you down to go back to the oasis one more time after this?”

Right. Because tomorrow, San goes back home for winter break and won’t see Wooyoung for over a month. He will lose the healing aura, will have to go back to walking with shitty lungs and the weight of dread dragging his feet down.

So, without question, San’s answer is yes.

❀

“I’m surprised it hasn’t snowed yet,” San thinks out loud. They’re laying down on the grass again. The spring remains unfrozen, seemingly untouched by the season.

“I love snow,” Wooyoung says. “Even though the cold kills plants, they always come back.”

San hums. The night sky is clear, stars littered about the sky. He has never seen them so vividly before; they truly do _ twinkle_, and he swears he can see them rotate with the rest of the world.

The oasis is much warmer in comparison to the rest of the woods. Instead of winter, it’s the beginning of fall, comfortable and temperate. The grass is still green even though the leaves are gone.

“Thank you for coming with me,” San says. “I had such a great time, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to go through that without your natural healing aura.”

Wooyoung laughs at San’s joking tone. “Of course, San. I’d use my power any day if that means you get to experience life like that.”

Something about that statement makes San’s stomach quake.

His heart is starting to pick up speed again. They’re shoulder-to-shoulder, faces pointed up at the star-riddled sky. San can breathe, sure, but the rest of his body is tingling, the butterflies having spread from his stomach to the rest of him.

“Wooyoung, I wanna ask you something.”

“Yeah?”

“What will you do when I’m gone?”

“San, please, not this again.”

“I want to know,” San says, firm. His throat tightens.

He’s asked this question to his parents before, stone-faced and emotion-free.

So why is it so hard to ask it now?

“I want to know, and it’s not just because I’m cynical. Nobody can deny what’s inevitable, and I just want to make sure that the ones I care about will be okay.”

Wooyoung sighs. San feels him roll over.

“San, everyone who cares about you won’t be okay when you die.”

San swallows despite the tightness in his throat.

“Why do you think it’s so difficult to hear you talk like that? I mean… San, I know that it’s easy for you to talk like that, and I know that I don’t have much of a say because I’m not the one who’s dying and your outlook on life is much different from mine, but like… sometimes you say things as if people don’t care about you. Like your life is insignificant just because it’s short. Do you see where I’m coming from?”

San shuts his eyes and blocks out the sky and stars. “I just… I just think…”

What _ does _he think? He can’t even finish his own sentence. Think what? That he’s going to die? That much is obvious. That nothing matters because he’s going to die?

His parents and their love and all the time and money they’ve spent on him. Yunho and Mingi and all their smiles. Hongjoong and Seonghwa and their infinite amount of generosity and kindness.

And Wooyoung and his everything.

Do those things not matter, just because his life is short?

“Life is precious, Sannie. No matter how long or short. And it’s heartbreaking to hear you talk as if your life isn’t precious just because it’s compromised.”

Water wells up beneath San’s eyelids. The last time he cried was in front of Mingi after he’d had a coughing fit, wailing into the walls about wanting to be normal and wishing that someone would just pull the plug on this sad, sad man and his poor excuse for a body.

He can’t cry in front of Wooyoung. Not like this.

But Wooyoung has already gathered him up in his arms before the tears fall, and San doesn’t even register it. He sobs and sobs into Wooyoung’s chest, arms and legs curled up and heart pounding erratically in his chest.

No healing aura could erase this.

“I’ve got you, Sannie,” Wooyoung whispers. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

San’s body is brittle. Underweight, pallid, ugly, and disgusting. He’s weak. He can’t breathe if it weren’t for his tank. He is strong by no means, can’t smoke, can’t drink, can’t do anything that the everyday college student would be able to do. He’s barely living by Yunho’s terms and sees the world as if it’s shrouded in darkness.

But in Wooyoung’s arms?

He may be a crying, slobbering mess, but he feels _ alive. _

Wooyoung pets the back of his head, fingers gingerly threading through his thin black hair as he kisses his forehead over and over.

“Life is so precious,” he whispers again. “_You _are precious, Sannie.”

When San finally manages to muster up enough strength to lift his face from Wooyoung’s chest, he gazes into those moonlit eyes as if Wooyoung were life itself. Wooyoung’s hand wanders from his head to his cheek, thumb brushing over his tear-stained face.

“San, forgive me,” Wooyoung says, and before San can even ask what for, the glistening fairy leans in and captures his lips with his own.

Startled, San can barely catch a breath and goes rigid in Wooyoung’s arms, but only for a brief moment. Wooyoung’s kiss is hesitant, and that’s when San remembers that Wooyoung didn’t have any friends growing up, that he’d never needed any, and now, Wooyoung is _ kissing him _and he may very well be Wooyoung’s first kiss.

Wooyoung pulls away with a gasp, breathless.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Sorry?” San has it in him to laugh. “You just kissed me and you’re apologizing?”

“W-well, it’s just, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before, and, like, it was my first time kissing someone so I’m sure it was terrible but—”

San surges forward to kiss him again just to shut him up.

Was the kiss terrible? Absolutely not, at least by San’s standards since he has literally nothing else to compare it to.

“I can’t believe you have the audacity to apologize,” San laughs when he pulls away. “How could kissing someone as magical as you warrant an apology?”

Wooyoung’s face brightens at that, his hands traveling back down to take San’s fingers in his, squeezing tight.

“I just had to get it out of the way before you leave me,” Wooyoung says.

“Just for a month, and then I’ll be back,” San reassures.

Wooyoung nods and squeezes his hands again. “You’ll be back. Promise?”

“Promise.” San squeezes back.

“Okay.”

Wooyoung pauses for a moment, then says, “Hey, remember that? That was a thing in the book I showed you.”

“Yeah, a really cheesy thing. ‘Maybe okay will be our always.’”

Wooyoung snorts with laughter, a sound that San could listen to on repeat any day.

“Then what should be our ‘okay?’” he asks.

“No,” San says. “We’re not doing that,” he adds before Wooyoung says something along the lines of “‘No’ is our okay, then!”

Wooyoung pouts, then pecks San’s nose. It tingles and burns with the intensity of a million suns.

Because that’s what Wooyoung is, a blazing, magical sun with the gravitational pull strong enough to capture a dying man’s cynical heart and turn it into something just as magical.

At least, that’s how San feels.

_ Magical. _

_ Alive. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear i don't hate the fault in our stars, john green pls don't sue me  
come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/galaxysangs)!


	6. petunia (blue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a fair warning: chapters from here on out get a lot heavier, i suggest you read on with caution!

_ “Hyung, why did that bird look like that?” _

_ “It was dead, Wooyoung.” _

_ “Dead? Is that what happens when things die?” _

_ “Well, no, not all the time. Not every living thing dies in such a gruesome fashion.” _

_ “What happens when things die, then?” _

_ “They become part of the earth.” _

_ “I don’t get it.” _

_ “You will understand someday. Now is not the time. One day… you will see for yourself. And then, you may ask that question again.” _

❀

The hospital is basically San’s second home.

The first time he’d been through the halls of the actual hospital was after pediatrics found that his condition might not be just asthma. They sent him and his mother to the general hospital across the street immediately after his physical for image scans, where he lay on a table that inserted him into a big tube that buzzed and whirred and clicked around him, engulfing his world in a mechanical blue. San was only thirteen, confused and afraid, and his mother told him to listen to every word and instruction the doctor told him, be a good boy and stay still and to “not worry.”

He was given a room. Room 117. There he sat with pain in his chest, apprehension bubbling inside him, lungs crackling when he breathed. He was given the choice of staying or going home to wait for the results, and of course, he chose home, where his warm bed and a cup of hot chocolate was waiting for him.

That night, he fell out of bed, heaving and coughing while hunched over on the floor, tears pouring from his eyes. He cried and cried, and it got harder and harder to breathe. He was curled up in his father’s arms as they rushed him in, and he was put under and fed oxygen for the first time.

The results came back five days later. San was still in room 117, bored out of his mind, but the cannula was new and exciting and he felt like he could breathe just the least bit better. His mother had been pulled out of the room, and San watched as the doctor dropped the bomb on her through the window, watched her hand clamp over her mouth, watched her eyes bug out and her face fall. The doctor tried to put it in simple terms for thirteen-year-old San to understand:

“Your image scans showed signs of consolidation in your lungs, which is why it’s hard for you to breathe. We don’t have a definitive diagnosis just yet, so we’ll have to run some more tests.” San had to ask what consolidation meant. “In image scans, lungs aren’t supposed to be white. That whiteness is consolidation. Con_solid_ation.”

_ Solid. _Not soft and squishy and pink and healthy like normal lungs are supposed to be.

San continued to do what his mother told him to do. Listen and be a good boy and stay still and don’t worry.

San was poked and prodded with needles, and even though he never dreaded getting his shots as a child, vaccines were nothing in comparison to what he went through. He was told he needed a “biopsy,” and as soon as he heard the word “cancer,” more tears burst from his eyes. They assured him that the procedure was just a way of getting a diagnosis, that it may or may not be cancer, but even San knew at that age that cancer was bad and people die from it.

He didn’t stop crying until the anesthesia kicked in. He woke up, drowsy and disoriented, and it was only after the painkillers wore off that he felt the excruciating pain in his ribs.

“What did they do?” he asked his mother, who was sitting by his hospital bed. He wanted to cry again.

“They had to take out some of your lung tissue, honey. It’s okay, it’ll heal.”

The incision scar on his skin, maybe. But his lungs? Certainly not.

“Pulmonary fibrosis.” The doctor sounded so sure. And he asked San many questions, all of which he said no to. The doctor was left puzzled.

“Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in a thirteen-year-old…” He trailed off, sounding considerably less sure, maybe even astounded. He spoke with San’s mother again outside in the hall, and she came back with teary eyes that she tried to hide with the back of her hand.

Doctors have to be straight up sometimes, even with young ones. San tried to be a good boy, listened to every word the doctor told him, but the only ones he truly latched onto were “chronic,” “incurable,” and “terminal.”

His mother had to explain it to him later, under the dim light of his hospital room, in even simpler terms.

“It’s where… your lungs become increasingly damaged, and it makes it hard to breathe,” she’d said. “And once the damage is done, it can’t be… it can’t be fixed. It’s permanent, and there’s no cure.”

There is no cure, but there is treatment.

And so, treatment for San began.

Removed from school. Given oxygen therapy, weekly appointments. Numerous blood tests. Breathing exercises. A healthy diet. Anything and everything San could do to live a little better even though his body was destroying itself.

Crying hurt, San learned over time. It hurt his lungs, and he couldn’t catch his breath, and his mother had to come in at night to cradle him to sleep. And she would cry a lot too, in what she thought was secrecy, but San witnessed her cry too many times when he wasn’t supposed to and that was why he decided to stop. He needed to be strong. For her. For his father.

He couldn’t care less about himself, however.

He did what he could. But as days ticked by and seasons began to blend together, spent nearly every minute indoors with only a few walks around the neighborhood for his exercise, he became increasingly _ tired_, and not the kind of tired sleep could fix. And as he got older, he came to realize just what his illness was doing to him and what that meant for his future, or lack thereof.

If it weren’t for his parents, he would rip the cannula out of his nose, go to sleep without it, and never wake up again.

He was in and out of the hospital as the spider spun its web and coated his lungs with its venom. They began to feel like weights in him, ones he couldn’t lift because they were _ part of him. _He wanted nothing more than to rip them out; they were killing him anyway. The lung transplant option was always on the table… but San had already given up.

When he thinks about it, maybe the day he was diagnosed was the day he gave up, unbeknownst to his thirteen-year-old self.

Sitting in a hospital room isn’t San’s ideal way of spending the new year, but it’s what he gets for being ill. He had coughed up a storm trying to convince his mother he was feeling fine, that it was just a normal episode, but she brought him anyway.

So here he lies, in room 117 once again.

**[San]**

_ Guess who just got SCANNED _

**[Wooyoung]**

_ ??? like, ct scan? _

_ Are you okay??? _

**[San]**

_ Yeah i’m fine, just had an episode and my mom got all scared so she brought me to the hospital _

_ It’s not that big of a deal really. I’m feeling better already _

**[Wooyoung]**

_ :( _

_ Well… at least you’ll have another picture to hang up on your wall _

_ I just hope it doesn’t look worse… _

Chances are, it won’t. Maybe there are a few more strings here and there, but his lungs are white when they’re supposed to be black and nothing is going to change that. The spider inside him will continue to live as long as he does. His lungs will get whiter and whiter until the webs become too heavy and dense and his lungs stop altogether.

He stays at the hospital overnight, figuring it would be a good move in case his lungs decide to act up again. Wooyoung might not be there to help him breathe, but a good supply of oxygen and painkillers are. His mother brings him sweets when he asks for them even though he’s supposed to be eating well. He wonders why she agrees so easily.

When San is shown the images of his lungs, he can’t tell the difference. But the doctors can, and according to them, there has been an increase.

“So does that mean I’m getting closer to dying?” San asks.

His mother gasps. “San!”

“I wouldn’t say that necessarily,” the doctor tells him. It’s about as honest as the doctor can get. Dr. Lee is his name, he’s balding and he has spots on his hands. He’s been straight up with San in the past and knows how San feels about a lung transplant. The offer is always on the table whenever San sees him.

This time is an exception. As if Dr. Lee has finally come to accept it.

There isn’t much else they can do for him. His oxygen tank is examined, his medication is refilled, and he’s sent on his merry way.

In his backpack sits the potion Hongjoong had gifted him. He remembers it one night and takes it out, turning it in his hands. It’s warm, sparkling even in the dark. He hasn’t taken a single sip from it, not even during the episode that led to his hospital visit in the first place. Perhaps he’s saving it for something _ worse_, maybe, if he starts coughing up blood or if he’s truly on the brink of death. He wonders what it will feel like, drinking it. If he would feel the magic coursing through him. If it feels anything like what being with Wooyoung feels like.

They text almost daily. Wooyoung bemoans his loneliness and complains about Seonghwa and Hongjoong being up his ass about something that he doesn’t elaborate on. San tells him that his lungs look worse, and Wooyoung sends several crying and angry emojis in response.

Being at home is all too familiar, making his first semester at university seem like a dream. A hallucination due to his lack of oxygen. Maybe he’s already dead and his soul is wandering the dimensions. Maybe Wooyoung doesn’t exist. Maybe fairies don’t exist. Maybe Wooyoung is a figment of his broken imagination, fabricated from false hope that he has a chance in life even when he knows he doesn’t.

Maybe he truly is bedridden and dying. Him returning to university for the second semester will be nothing but another dream. When he’s laying in bed, staring up at the brilliant moon, eyes unwavering, he wonders if he could jump into it and wake up. As if that glowing ball in the sky is his portal back to the real world.

He stares and stares. He can’t bring himself to stand up and try.

And then he realizes unceremoniously that he’s dying in both worlds. There’s no point in going back.

❀

In the seven years San was stuck at home, he spent nearly all his time familiarizing himself with the house. When he wasn’t sitting in his room watching dramas and anime, he brought his tank with him wherever he went, upstairs, downstairs, all around, and he walked just to remind himself that he could. He watched cobwebs grow in the corner of the living room until his mother finally decided to vacuum them up. He counted how many days it took lightbulbs to go out. After he studied, he’d go outside and do laps around the yard. That was the extent of his exercise.

He finds himself falling back into that routine. He chooses his courses for the next semester and steps out onto the front porch where he watches the snow fall in imperfect little flakes onto the lawn. The frigid air isn’t good for him and he knows it, but he quite enjoys the cold itself. It hugs him just as heat would. It tickles the tips of his ears and nose. It covers his vision in pristine white and makes him _ feel. _

When he goes back inside, he runs his fingers along every surface of the house. The polished and unpolished wood, the stiff fabric of the living room sofa, the granite kitchen tops, and more. His mother watches him for a few seconds before returning to the daily newspaper. She’s watched him do it before.

“No matter what you do, those surfaces aren’t going to change much,” she’d told him.

“I know,” he’d replied. “But I figured I might as well imagine they could.”

That’s what San has. His imagination.

He can imagine a different life, one where he’d go to the market with his mother and breathe in all the delicious foods. He’d go to the park and interact with his peers, make friends and have sleepovers and make buttery popcorn for movie nights. He’d fall in love and hold hands with somebody and kiss them. He’d have sex. He’d have his heart broken and repaired. He’d travel. Walk. Run. Swim. Jump. Explore.

He’d _ live. _

An undulating pool of memories that don’t exist floats above his head at night. He dreams of it. He dreams of his younger self growing up without the cannula, without the swollen fingers and the dry coughing and the heaving, gaining weight and muscle and playing sports and getting his diploma. He walks up on that stage, tall and proud, and waves to the throng of people he doesn’t know. No tank trailing behind him. Not a flaw to be seen.

He eats dinner with his family and they talk and smile and laugh. San tells them about Wooyoung. Tells them that he is one of the most animated people San has ever met and has a thing for nature. Says that he has black hair with a bluish tint to it and brown eyes that have specks of green. Says that he really likes flowers but doesn’t know the names of any of them. His parents laugh endearingly, and tell him that they’d love to meet Wooyoung someday.

He tells them about Yunho and Mingi and how their performance took his breath away, literally. He talks about how the lights looked, how they made him feel like he was in a whole new world. Like he was living in the depths of the ocean and he had gills and he could breathe. They listen intently, with eyes filled with wonder and mouths curved into tender smiles.

And it’s okay. San feels okay. Cynicism runs through his being, but he feels _ okay. _

He texts Wooyoung out of the blue, _ i’m feeling okay. _

And Wooyoung replies, _ that’s great, sannie. things r gonna be okay :) _

San knows deep down that things won’t be okay.

But he figures might as well imagine that they will be.

❀

“I would give you a hug, but I know how you don’t like people touching you and all so I’ll give you a telepathic hug,” is the first thing Yunho says when San steps into their room.

It hasn’t changed much at all; Yunho’s crap is still littered in miscellaneous piles on his side of the room. San’s pillows are still in place. Yunho arrived before him, so he’s already sheeted his bed and made himself back at home.

They go out for smoothies and say hi to Mingi at the café. They stay there until the sun is low in the sky. San talks about the hospital and how his lungs look worse, but not by much. It makes Yunho frown, expectedly, but San shrugs and swears he doesn’t feel any worse.

Mingi slides into the booth next to Yunho once his shift is over, offering them chocolate-covered strawberries and mini croissants. They’re so bubbly when they’re together, San notes. They bounce off each other’s energy, their eyes disappear when they laugh together, and all feels right with the world when San sees two people so happy like that.

The last time he’d truly laughed was when he was fourteen. He’d doubled over in laughter, and then in pain, as the air he inhaled while laughing never came out right. It was all in coughs, until he was on the floor and carried to the hospital once more.

Dr. Lee was frank with him.

“Actions such as crying or laughing may exacerbate the attacks.”

So San learned not to laugh, to keep his mouth shut, to stop his body whenever it needed release because the release never happened _ right. _ Whether he laughed or cried, he could never catch his breath. It was best to stop altogether. When he cried, there were tears and sniffles, but he would not allow anything more. His laughs were reduced to mere chuckles and giggles. He became somewhat hollow, his emotions were there but never _ there_, never surfaced, because he couldn’t risk it.

The night he spent with Wooyoung before he left for winter break was the first time he properly sobbed in _ years. _And it was because of Wooyoung, that it was possible in the first place.

When he and Yunho and Mingi finally part ways, San carries himself and his tank to the clearing, where sure enough, Jung Wooyoung is standing. And completely ignoring the tube dangling in front of San’s body, he rams straight into San in a monster hug, nearly knocking San off his feet.

“I missed you so much, Sannie! Holy shit, it was so _ boring _without you here,” he says in a flurry, sounding breathless already. He pulls away, reluctantly, and straightens out his coat’s front. “How was your break?”

San shrugs, hands tucked into his pockets. His breath flutters up into little clouds. His _ breath. _He can see his breath.

Perhaps that’s why he likes the cold.

“Boring. It was like my life came back to me,” San says. As soon as the words are out, he realizes just how morbid they sound.

“And what is that life?” Wooyoung asks.

A life of translucent pictures of his insides. Needles and fluids and tests. Of wandering his house on a daily basis, stepping outside for a few puffs of the earth’s air, seeing the same sights. Trying to sleep despite the moonlight taunting him with a different dimension. Tracing surfaces with his cold, chubby fingers and imagining them, _ anything_, changing.

A life spent imagining a different life.

Wooyoung nods. He doesn’t put up a fight, to San’s surprise, as if he’s starting to understand.

San doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

❀

Wooyoung’s bedroom is a treasure trove of flowers and trinkets. It has this old fashioned charm to it, just like the rest of the house. The floorboards creak. It’s warm because the plants need that. There’s a miniature chandelier hanging in the middle of the ceiling, its limbs like curved branches of a tree. The bulbs look like tulips.

His room is golden, just like him.

His bed is veiled by wispy pink curtains, sheets a blinding shade of white. When San sits on it, he wants to melt into it.

“This is certainly better than the dorm beds,” he comments.

Wooyoung snorts. “Tell me about it. Good thing fairies don’t need that much sleep. Sleeping on Yunho’s bed was a nightmare in and of itself.”

San lies down. It’s even comfier than his bed back home. Floral aromas seep into his nose, filling his brain with a pink bliss, a sparkling haze. He can see it when he shuts his eyes, little flecks of gold glitter shimmering in the dark.

“Are you tired, Sannie?” Wooyoung asks.

“Always.”

“You could sleep here if you want,” Wooyoung offers. “Your trip back here must have been tiring.”

San opens one eye and raises that eyebrow. “You don’t wanna explore? I’m surprised you didn’t suggest we go to the oasis.”

“San, it’s the middle of winter.”

“Touché.”

“I’m surprised _ you _ are the one who brought up exploring.” Wooyoung winks his way. “You like it, right? The trips we take to the woods?”

San nods. “Your magic works wonders, Wooyoung. When I was home… it was like my life lost all its magic.”

Wooyoung lies down next to him, arms touching. He faces the ceiling, a cottony pink sky beneath the curtains. “Have you ever been to a hospital, Wooyoung?” San asks.

“No,” Wooyoung answers honestly. “Being a fairy, there’s no real need for us to go to human hospitals. Why do you ask?”

“That’s where I was over break. For, like, the first half of it.”

“What’s it like?”

“Think of it like… a giant white space. Emptiness. But that emptiness is filled with dread and boredom, because you’re waiting for someone to come and tell you what you already know. That you’re not okay. That your life is slowly slipping away and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. But it’s reassuring, I guess, knowing that you’re a step closer to death.”

Wooyoung blinks.

San continues, “There’s a lot of noise coming from other places that aren’t your room because other people are dying there too. You just can’t see. You’re so immersed in your own blank world that you forget that other people are dying too. There are heart monitors set up for some people because you never know if it’ll stop. It smells like chemicals because people need medicine to stay alive. You sit there, in a giant white space, surrounded by pain. That’s what being in a hospital is like.”

Wooyoung blinks again. Stares. San hadn’t even noticed Wooyoung slipping his fingers in the spaces between his own.

“I got cynical again,” San mumbles.

“It’s okay,” Wooyoung says.

_ Is it really? _

“I… should expect that, honestly. Humans go to the hospital because they’re sick or injured. It’s all pain in there.”

“Yeah.”

Wooyoung looks down. Sunshine in a walking body, dejected. Like a monstrous raincloud materialized over his head and put out the enormous flame.

“Wooyoung, I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you upset or anything.”

“It’s okay, Sannie. Really.” Wooyoung looks up again, squeezes his hand. “Not everything can be sunshine and flowers. I know that now.”

“I didn’t… I didn’t want to…” San trails off. Didn’t want to _ what_?

“You must feel helpless,” Wooyoung whispers. His voice shakes, as does his hand.

“Y-yeah.”

“Because you’re dying, and you can’t stop it.”

“Yeah.”

Wooyoung nods. He sighs, glancing down at their intertwined fingers.

“San… even as a fairy, I don’t… I don’t have the power to save you.”

“Wooyoung, I don’t need saving. I’ve accepted my fate.”

Wooyoung grimaces. He almost seems to shrink, his hand squeezing San’s even tighter. “It makes me feel helpless too. Knowing I can’t do anything to save you even though I have so much power.”

“Hey, Wooyoung. Please, look at me.”

Wooyoung concedes, looking up. San can see the flecks of emerald gleaming under a golden light.

“I’m gonna be okay. Nobody can stop this from happening, but I’m here now, alright? I’m here now.”

_ I’m here now. _

In this golden moment.

San feels like his body is spread across a bed of flower petals. He’s warm and soft and brimming with color.

He knows what it feels like to be high, from that day at the oasis.

Is this what being drunk feels like?

His head is swimming. He can feel his eyelids growing heavy, his body succumbing to some sort of gravitational pull. Helpless, but not because he’s dying. He can’t stop himself.

“And I’m grateful,” Wooyoung says. He raises their hands to his lips and presses a kiss to the back of San’s. Like two plush petals against his skin. “I am _ so _grateful, that you are here with me right now. It’s what we’ll always have, Sannie. We’ll always have now.”

“We’ll always have yesterday too,” San points out.

Wooyoung’s face brightens, spreading like sunshine. “Exactly,” he says, kissing San’s hand again. “Tomorrow will always be uncertain. But that’s okay, isn’t it?”

San nods. He could die tomorrow. But he could also live tomorrow. And that would certainly be okay.

“You know…” Wooyoung says. “I was always curious as to why you never questioned me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I told you that I was found in a basket right off the bat. We hadn’t even known each other for a half hour and I was already telling you I basically had two dads that found me in a basket near a train station.”

San snorts. “Or how Seonghwa and Hongjoong don’t look a day over twenty, or how I could all of a sudden breathe around you, or how the flowers kept randomly appearing, or how those flowers kept disappearing.”

“Yeah, all of that too.” Wooyoung giggles. “Flowers that I produce don’t last. They wither and disappear after a certain amount of time. I think it’s because my powers aren’t super developed yet, because Hongjoong and Seonghwa-hyung’s flowers always last.”

San laughs too. “I mean… I guess I was afraid to ask more. Like, I knew how… odd your life was, but I was afraid that if I asked, you’d get squicked out or something.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have gotten _ squicked out_, but I would’ve had to come up with more lies to tell you. I was upfront with you because… I don’t know, you just seemed… different?”

San raises an eyebrow. “Uh huh. I _ do _have a tube up my nose, that’s pretty different.”

Wooyoung gives his shoulder a light shove. “Hey, no more cynicism for you tonight.”

“It’s merely an observation and an irrefutable fact!”

Wooyoung rolls his eyes and continues, “Remember how I told you about what the flowers said to me?”

“That I was your new friend?”

“Yeah. That’s why I was so upfront with you. Why I opened up to you so easily. Nature has a way of knowing things. It sees all. And the flowers chose you.”

“Chose me for what?”

“To be my friend, of course. The flowers had never done that for me before. You know how many times I went to the park as a kid? Every time, I’d play with some of the neighboring kids but never once did I make friends with them. The trees always rustled differently around them. A warning sign that they were, or were going to be, bad people.”

“Wasn’t it lonely?”

Wooyoung shakes his head. He’s still smiling, San notices. “Plants and animals are my friends. Seonghwa and Hongjoong are my friends. I didn’t need anyone else.”

“But now…”

“But now there’s you, Choi San.”

Wooyoung’s graceful fingers trace the sharp line of San’s jaw.

“Do you really need me though?” San asks, his voice small.

“Well, what do you think?”

_ No, not really, _San wants to say. But his mouth is filled with flowers that are sucking all the moisture out of it, and when he’s looking at Wooyoung he can’t bring himself to say anything that would dare poison those flowers.

_ You may not need me, _ he thinks this time. _ But maybe you do. _

_ Maybe, maybe, maybe. _

❀

_ Maybe I’ll die tomorrow. _

_ But maybe I’ll live. _

_ And I’ll take ‘maybe’ over ‘won’t’ any day, _

_ If I want to live, I have no other choice. _

❀

_ What does nature know? It doesn’t know all. _

_ And what it knows, it doesn’t always tell. _

_ Because maybe the future will change. _

_ Maybe the wind will blow in a different direction. _

_ Maybe the flowers will bloom earlier than expected. _

_ Maybe the trees will shed their leaves later than expected. _

_ The fauna may run away, or they may stay in place. _

_ Nature knows a lot. _

_ But it doesn’t know everything. _

_ 6\. He acts like he knows it all. He doesn’t. Because things change, and life is unpredictable, no matter how short. _

❀

“What are you doing?” Yunho asks, glancing over at San’s laptop screen.

He and Wooyoung are huddled closely together on one of the library’s loveseats, eyes fixed on the rotating sphere of a satellite-generated image.

“We’re traveling,” Wooyoung answers. “Typing in random coordinates into Google Earth and seeing where it takes us.”

“That’s actually a really good date idea,” Mingi comments.

San completely disregards the fact that Mingi said the notoriously feared d-word.

“So far, we’ve been to Papua New Guinea, Venezuela, Iran, Colorado, Quebec, Singapore, Mali—”

“It’s been a ride,” San interjects before Wooyoung lists the twenty-something other locations they’ve touched down upon.

Yunho and Mingi look at each other with a glint of something in their eyes. San knows what they’re thinking.

But in all honesty, he can’t bring himself to deny it or defend himself against it.

Because what’s the point in defending himself against something he knows to be true?

Yunho looks back at him with a smirk and all-knowing eyes. San has it in him to return the exact same look.

“Cute,” is what Yunho ends up saying.

Wooyoung chuckles, and San loses himself in the sound of it.

_ Yes, yes he is. _

❀

“Did you know that it’s illegal to take pictures of the Eiffel Tower at night?” Wooyoung asks as he scrolls through Google images of the Eiffel Tower at night.

San peers over Wooyoung’s shoulder to look at all the possibly illegally-taken photographs of the magnificent Eiffel Tower with its latticework lit up like a Christmas tree. “Seems like a lot of people would go to jail then.”

“Jail time for taking a picture? Surely the punishment would just be a fine or something!”

San shrugs. “Maybe all of those pictures were taken with special permission.”

“Maybe.” Wooyoung huffs and exits the tab, returning to his blank document for an essay due in two days. “To think, wanting to capture such a beautiful sight and keep it forever is illegal. Imagine if the entire world was like that. There’d be no beauty in the world, San! Beauty is meant to be remembered, don’t you think?”

_ Because what if people forget? _

“Photographs are some of the world’s greatest inventions, Sannie. You can see and remember everything. And you can choose which sights you want to keep. I think that’s a beautiful thing.” Wooyoung chuckles to himself and starts typing.

It’s astounding, how quickly Wooyoung’s brain works. One minute, he’s giggling over photographs existing and the next his smile is gone and his eyes are laser-focused on a procrastinated assignment. San would have to raise his voice or snap his fingers in front of Wooyoung’s face to get his attention, as he’s come to learn.

Without another thought, San finds himself picking up his phone, opening his camera, and snapping a picture of Wooyoung in his most concentrated state.

_ I would take a million pictures of you if that meant I get to remember you when I’m gone. _

❀

What goes up must come down.

San plummets at the end of February, quite literally, when he jolts awake to a pressure in his chest, coughs gurgling in the back of his throat until they force their way out of him. His hands struggle for purchase, fumbling until all his limbs seize up and his body slips onto the ground, landing with a thud that rivals a tree falling in the middle of the woods.

It indeed makes a sound. Yunho shoots up almost immediately.

“San, hey! San!”

_ I’m okay, I’m okay. _But the words come out as more coughs.

_ The potion. Need the potion. _

But Yunho can’t know the potion exists.

There are tears rising in San’s eyes, his throat burning with metallic air. He can’t tell where Yunho is standing; it’s too dark and his eyes sting and everything is covered in a veil of water. Everything is rippling. His head is pounding.

Everything in him is screaming.

“S… g-go…”

“Go where? San-ah, where do you need me to go? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

San manages to shake his head. “W… ah… wa-ter.”

“Fuck, _ fuck_, okay. Water. I’ll be right back, okay? Fuck, should’ve filled it up earlier…” Yunho’s voice gets farther and farther away, until San hears the door shut, Yunho’s flip flops smacking against the floor.

With the air he can manage, San crawls to his backpack despite his limbs locking. His fingers are on fire as he unzips it, just barely, just enough to slip his hand through and grab the bottle filled with the magic liquid.

_ Only one sip is all it takes. _

He’s burning up, he can feel it, as if the flower surrounding his body has been set aflame. Something wants him dead. The spider. A demon. _ Something wants him dead. _He is no longer floating among cotton candy clouds or surrounded by a pink sparkling haze.

He’s _ here_, in his pathetic excuse for a body, who can barely open a water bottle because he can’t breathe.

Perhaps San takes more than one sip. Two gulps, because he chokes trying to get the first sip, the magic liquid trickling down his chin. But the second sip trails down his throat, lukewarm and fruity, and it’s almost as if he can feel the magic as soon as it passes his spasming windpipe.

It pools pleasantly in his stomach, like a drop of water falling into the serene surface of an untouched spring. The waves ripple, sending more of itself further and further out from the center. San blinks the tears from his eyes, his violent coughs dissipating into heavy wheezing as the magic spreads throughout the rest of him.

When Yunho finally returns with a filled water bottle, San has stopped coughing, and the potion is tucked safely back into his bag.

“Jesus, San,” Yunho mumbles, tipping the bottle into San’s mouth. San drinks it willingly despite his symptoms already having subsided. There’s still a slight tingle in the back of his mouth. “It’s been a while since this happened, you know. I was honestly kind of surprised.”

San clears his throat. He drank three quarters of the bottle. “Surprised that this happened?”

“No, I’m surprised that you went that long without having an episode. You warned me at the beginning of last semester, remember? That it would happen a lot. You even told me I could go somewhere else to sleep if I needed to.”

That seems so long ago, San thinks. As if he can’t even remember saying that to him. Like it never happened.

“Even if it happened a lot, I wouldn’t go anywhere else, San. What would happen if you had an episode and nobody was here to help you? What if you can’t catch your breath and you die because I’m gone?”

San looks up at him, bewildered. Under the dim light of his desk lamp, he can see Yunho’s glassy eyes, damp with tears.

“When I first met you, you made all these cynical jokes, and you said it was okay to make jokes about your illness, but fucking _ hell_, San. I can’t. I can’t make jokes. Because _ this_—” Yunho motions at San’s collapsed body. “—isn’t a joke. It’s _ not. _I get it, if you’re lighthearted about your condition because you’re the one experiencing it. You’re the one feeling it. But we’re watching it from the outside. And you have no idea what it feels like, watching from the outside.”

When San speaks of the inevitable fact, that he is going to die earlier than most, the people around him give him sad looks. His parents used to reprimand him, before they got used to it. The doctor looks tired. Wooyoung frowns. But everyone looks _ sad. _Sad because Choi San is indeed dying.

Maybe San has come to terms with it, but nobody else has.

“It’s real, San-ah. It’s real.” Yunho swallows, a choked sob breaking past his lips. “I don’t want to believe it’s real.”

“Yunho…”

“You don’t see it the way we do, San. We’re watching you die. We’re watching you make light of the fact that you’re dying. And we have to remind ourselves that this is how you cope, that this is how you try to make it seem like it’s this thing that doesn’t matter, but it _ does_, San. None of us want you to watch you die.”

San’s eyes squeeze shut.

_ I’m the one dying. I’m the one who has to live with the fact that I’m not going to live. You are watching me die, I’m the one who _ is _ dying. What would I see, Yunho? What would I see in me? If I watched my every move, saw myself through a different pair of eyes, what would be different? _

_ Why does it matter? _

_ You aren’t the ones dying. _

_ I am. _

_ So why waste your time wishing that you could save me? _

_ You can’t. _

_ Stop. _

_ Just stop. _

_ It’s pointless. _

When San wakes up the next morning, Yunho is gone. It’s seven, and Yunho doesn’t have class until noon.

❀

“What’s wrong, Sannie?”

San glances up, though he continues to mindlessly prod the tines of his fork at a blueberry pancake. He clears his throat, as if evidence of last night’s attack still lingers.

“Yunho… got mad at me, I think.”

“Why?”

San bites his lip. His appetite is nonexistent, but Wooyoung would give him hell if he didn’t eat.

“I had an episode last night.”

Wooyoung’s face falls. “Oh.”

“I drank some of Hongjoong’s potion. It stopped the coughing almost instantly.” Despite the good news, Wooyoung remains frowning. “N-not in front of Yunho, though. I sent him down the hall to get water, and I snuck a sip in when he was gone.”

Wooyoung blinks, silent. San can’t bring himself to look at him.

“So… why was he mad at you?”

San sighs and sets his fork down. “I don’t think he’s mad _ at _me. I think he’s frustrated. That…”

“That…”

“That I’m dying. I know I say it a lot. I know I make light of it. Last night was the first attack I’ve had in _ months_, Wooyoung. Yunho saw it and freaked out. It was another reminder that my disease is real, and it’s killing me. And he said… that he doesn’t like it when I make jokes.”

“San…” Wooyoung sighs, the look in his eyes spelling careful consideration. “I agree with him.”

“Why, Wooyoung? Why don’t you guys understand? I’m the one dying, I’m the one making the jokes, I don’t see why it _ matters_—”

“San, if I or Yunho or Mingi were the ones dying, how would you feel if you had to sit back and watch someone you care about joke about their own inevitable death?”

San’s thoughts come to an abrupt halt. Wooyoung is glaring at him, indignance flaming in his speckled eyes. The most dangerous look he’d ever seen in such a mystical, beautiful being. He’s known Wooyoung to be nothing but cheery, bountiful.

Who knew?

“You wouldn’t be making jokes either. You wouldn’t laugh. Right, San? Really, _ really _ think about it. When you’re on death’s row, and your last breath is slipping away, would you joke in front of us while we’re standing at your bedside watching your body crumble?” Wooyoung huffs, shaking his head. “We _ know_, San. We are well aware that you are dying. We’re not trying to say that you aren’t, or that you’re not allowed to make light of your illness, but please try to understand why we don’t like it when you do. You dying _ will _ affect us because you _ matter._”

San can already feel remnants of last night’s tears resurfacing. He looks down at his blueberry pancake. It’s getting cold, sad, and soggy.

Kind of like him.

“You _ matter _to us, San. Do you know why?”

San shakes his head. He couldn’t even begin to fathom why. His parents, maybe, but the rest of them? They’ve only known him for months.

“You have made yourself known in our memories. You have left impressions on our minds and hearts. And when you’re gone, we will lose that piece of us. You are a piece of us, San. Do you know that it’s going to hurt when you’re gone?”

“Of course I know—”

“Then how could you say you don’t matter to us? If you acknowledge that it’s going to hurt to lose you, why can’t you acknowledge you matter to us? Do you truly see yourself like that? Like you don’t matter? If you didn’t matter, we wouldn’t hurt.”

San glances to his side. Several tables are looking at them as Wooyoung had raised his voice. He wonders, does he matter to those people? Would the people that don’t know him weep for him? Does he matter to them?

But does _ that _even matter?

“When things die… they become part of the earth,” Wooyoung says in a much lower, somber voice. He leans in. “And we live on this planet. We breathe on this planet. We see, feel, hear, smell, taste everything on this planet. Everything makes everything. We wouldn’t have blue skies without you. The ozone wouldn’t exist. Death and decay would be everywhere. This planet wouldn’t thrive without you. We need you. So _ yes_, Choi San, you _ matter._”

_ Even in death, you matter. _

_ You will always matter. _

_ So live, Choi San. _

_ Live for as long as you can. _

_ Before you go, live. _

_ We need you. _

_ You. Matter. _

❀

_ “Hyung, do you believe that everything happens for a reason?” _

_ “Hm… that’s a tough one, Wooyoung.” _

_ “Like… fate? Destiny? Do you believe those things exist?” _

_ “I cannot say for certain.” _

_ “I thought you and Hongjoong-hyung knew everything! What about the trees and flowers?” _

_ “Aha, well, you give us too much credit. And nature… nature knows a lot, but not everything. It is not a fortune teller or mind reader. However, it _ sees _ all. It knows everybody more than anybody else. It knows you. It knows whoever you will meet in the future. It sees the best and worst parts in everything.” _

_ “So things _ don’t _ happen for a reason?” _

_ “Perhaps, or perhaps not. Life is unpredictable like that. Nature is no exception. If something happens to you and you feel like it happened for a reason, who’s to say it didn’t? You find meaning in your own life, Wooyoung. That is how life goes.” _

_ “Life is weird, hyung.” _

_ “Life is beautiful, Wooyoung. You will see for yourself one day.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmmmm hmmm...
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/galaxysangs)


	7. violet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hellooo there, i just wanted to say thank you to those who've been sticking with this fic for a while, i started writing this back in 2019 and i had the ending all planned out but had no idea how to fill it... and now it's the fic that i plan on finishing the soonest lmao
> 
> warning in this chapter for body image issues and just overall increasing amounts of angst!

_ “Hyung, why does my body make flowers when I revive something?” _

_ “Wooyoung, what have you been reviving? I thought Hongjoong and I told you to be careful with that!” _

_ “It was just an experiment! I brought back a dead worm, that’s it! I barely felt it!” _

_ “Wooyoung…” _

_ “Hyung, please just answer my question.” _

_ “Oh, fine. When fairies heal or revive something, there is a transfer of energy. When that transfer occurs, some of it is released, whether it be from your body or from the earth itself, depending on where the transfer occurs. That extra energy takes on the form of flowers or other flora.” _

_ “Oh… I mean, I don’t really get it, but okay.” _

_ “Please, Wooyoung, use that power sparingly. The bigger the organism, the more energy it takes up. Don’t exhaust yourself, don’t use that power all willy-nilly, okay?” _

_ “No worries, hyung. I’ll be careful!” _

❀

Punching in random coordinates into Google Earth really does make for good dates, San realizes, especially since he’s unable to travel by any other means. Screw airplanes and cruise ships and trains and cars; San has the entire world at his fingertips, literally, and Wooyoung is right next to him, beaming at the locations and their most beautiful sights.

And the thing is, he’s completely okay with calling them “dates.” He laughs when Yunho and Mingi point at them and giggle at their virtual vacations. Wooyoung is too focused on the sights to notice. But San notices it all, like he always does.

He notices the way Wooyoung furrows his eyebrows and leans into the screen to scrutinize every detail of whatever image they’re looking at. He notices Yunho leaning in to whisper something that’s probably benign into Mingi’s ear, making light fun of San and Wooyoung on their “dates.” He notices Mingi’s smile and his crooked teeth and the way Yunho seems to make that smile appear so effortlessly, and he does his best not to raise any eyebrows at it.

San learns that Wooyoung’s favorite spot is Paris. He’s looked over the same Google images of the possibly-illegally-taken photos of the Eiffel Tower at night time and time again. He never tires of it.

“It must smell awful, though,” Wooyoung says. “Most cities tend to smell awful. There’s too much pollution.”

“That’s sad. Fairies can’t clean the air?” San whispers, side-glancing Yunho and Mingi, who both have their AirPods in.

Wooyoung shakes his head. “If we could, this planet would have been saved _ years _ago.”

San grimaces and thinks of the world blanketed by a smog so thick that the Eiffel Tower no longer shines at night. It would be useless to light up anything. It would be useless to go outside, and everybody, sick or healthy, living or dying, would never leave their houses, lest the smog invade their lungs and kill them instantly.

Thankfully, the world isn’t like that just yet.

No, the world is full of places like the woods Wooyoung continues to take him down once in a while. Places like the oasis may not be accessible to humans, but they’re _ there. _San knows that now.

So when Wooyoung is occupied looking at the wondrous world they walk upon, San watches him and the little features his face shows, like a movie in real time, right before his eyes.

_ You absolute masterpiece of a movie, _San thinks.

Wooyoung’s lips curve into a smile. San would very much like to kiss it.

“San, if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

Something about the question is familiar to San. He’s probably been asked this before, whether it be by Wooyoung or his doctor or his parents. He knows this question, he’s answered this question before. It’s such a _ Wooyoung _question to ask.

San can’t remember the last answer he gave. So he thinks of a new one, the one right in front of him.

“Paris.”

_ Because it’s Wooyoung’s favorite. _

Wooyoung chuckles, looking away from the Eiffel Tower and at San instead. “So, go to Paris.”

“Alright, punch in the coordinates then.”

“No, Sannie.” Wooyoung laughs again. “Go to Paris for me someday, and tell me what it’s like. Tell me everything you see.”

San narrows his eyes at the laptop screen, still displaying an array of photos Paris right there in front of him.

“Don’t you dare say no,” Wooyoung says.

In the end, San just laughs too, and nods, because he knows Wooyoung won’t let this go, won’t let San tell him no or deflect the outlandish request with his illness as his scapegoat. As a compromise, he says, “Alright, Wooyoung. Whatever you want.”

Wooyoung’s face lights up just like the Eiffel Tower does at night. The difference is that San could take a million pictures, and none of them would be illegal.

But they would be just as beautiful.

❀

It’s the beginning of March when dewdrops instead of frost start sprouting on blades of grass. It’s warming up miraculously early. The sun still sets too early for San’s liking, but at least it’s temperate and it hasn’t snowed since the beginning of February.

Wooyoung takes him back through the winding paths of the magical woods, back to the oasis where the air is quite noticeably warmer and the sun shines infinitely brighter. The vibrant colors haven’t faded in the slightest. It smells of morning dew and flowers with a hint of citrus, just the perfect amount of sweetness for such a golden moment.

San has decided to coin the term “golden moment” for times where he feels okay. Where the things in front of him aren’t so grim, when his head isn’t stuck in cynical clouds that only threaten to drag him away from the sun. Thinking back, he’s had a lot of golden moments, especially within the last few months.

It’s Wooyoung, he thinks. It has to be. There is no other explanation.

The first golden moment he can think of: seeing the oasis for the first time while being able to _ breathe. _Traversing the land on his own two feet. The first walk they took together, when San was uncertain and Wooyoung was hopelessly optimistic.

Then, going to his first ever live show to watch his friends dance. Being able to withstand the clamor and chaos of a rowdy audience. Seeing Wooyoung under those flashing lights, every color. When San was still uncertain and Wooyoung was proud.

And _ god_, when Wooyoung kissed him. When he still had tear-stained cheeks. When he properly sobbed for the first time in years.

Their first virtual vacation. Seeing Wooyoung so fascinated by the photos, immersed in the online world.

And now, when they’re lying on the grass under the gentle rays of the sun, engulfed in the constant hum of nature and the serenity of another golden moment.

San turns onto his side, resting his head on his palm. Wooyoung has his eyes closed, breathing steadily, as if he’s sleeping.

“Wooyoung,” San whispers.

Wooyoung opens one eye and looks at San with it. “Yeah?”

“Hi.”

Wooyoung opens his other eye and laughs, all high and squeaky. He turns onto his side, mirroring San. “Well, hi.”

San could look at him all day like this.

“How are you feeling?” San asks.

“Good,” Wooyoung answers. “And you?”

“Good.”

“That’s better than okay.”

“I know.”

Wooyoung smiles, lifting his hand to San’s cheek, cradling it tenderly, fondly. San curls his fingers around Wooyoung’s wrist. It fits.

“Is Yeosang here?” San wonders.

Wooyoung nods. “He always is.”

“So… he knows I’m here.”

“Yeah. He knows. And it’s okay, he’s cool with it.”

“Indeed,” says that liquid velvet voice San has only heard once before. He still recognizes it though, as he’s never heard anything like it.

When he springs up, there the water nymph is, head poking just above the surface of the calm water. “San, we meet again.”

“O-oh… yeah, it’s been a while.” San laughs awkwardly.

Yeosang regards him with a nod. “I apologize for appearing unannounced, but I heard my name. I was specifically instructed not to intrude whenever San comes by, but—”

“What? Who told you to do that?” Wooyoung asks.

Yeosang grins. “Well, who else would?”

Wooyoung laughs incredulously. “Oh my god, they didn’t.”

“They did.”

“That’s… kind of embarrassing.”

“They are just looking out for you and San. I understand you two want your… alone time.”

Wooyoung slaps a palm against his forehead. “Yeosang… even when we can’t see you, you’re always going to be here.”

“Just pretend as if I am not here, then,” Yeosang says. “All I ask is that you do not defile the soil here with your… activities.”

“Yeosang!” Wooyoung shrieks.

All the while, San struggles to contain his laughter, smothering it with the back of his hand.

The slightest sliver of a smile spreads across Yeosang’s face before he slinks back underwater, sly and almost invisible.

“I can’t believe them,” Wooyoung mutters, his face buried behind his hands.

San snickers, grabbing hold of his wrists and prying them off of his face, just so he can look down at him. In the midst of everything, San had somehow ended up straddling him, admiring him from above.

It takes both of them a few moments to realize the position they’re in, and once they do, their faces erupt into a furious rosy blush.

Then, Wooyoung laughs.

“You’re like the sun, Sannie,” he says, relinquishing his wrists to San’s grip. “The sun that keeps everything alive.”

San scoffs mirthfully, removing his hands from Wooyoung’s wrists and leaning back. “You could smother the sun,” Wooyoung goes on. “The sun has nothing on you.”

San’s brain is yelling at him like an aggravated parent, telling him to _think realistically_; he’s never going to be like the sun because the sun is going to last for billions of years and his life’s thread is only a few inches long. The sun’s rays simply weather the dye that holds it together. He looks down at Wooyoung from above and thinks that _he _is the sun, a blazing star in the center of his solar system, all-powerful but not blinding.

Wooyoung laces his fingers with San’s and smiles. “Got nothing cynical to say to me now?” he teases.

San just chuckles and leans down to kiss him.

The sun has nothing on this golden moment, he thinks.

❀

They are mere outlines behind Wooyoung’s pink curtains, bodies pressed together underneath a gentle incandescence, casting their purple shadows to the dust fluttering about the room. “Seonghwa and Hongjoong are out somewhere,” Wooyoung had promised, “so let’s take advantage of that.”

Not even the moon is bearing witness to this moment in San’s life, one that San never thought he would live to see.

Where there is someone kissing him, touching him, eliciting sounds from his mouth that he didn’t even know he could make. His body shudders with every stroke across the canvas of his body, as Wooyoung’s hands paint magic into his skin.

His eyes struggle to stay open, sheer pleasure forcing them closed. He presses his lips together, willing away every moan that threatens to fall out of him, but there’s one instance where Wooyoung’s lips meet his neck and he’s absolutely done for. Like a million butterfly wings quivering against his skin, a warm wetness trailing down, _ down_, until San truly can’t help the whine that escapes him.

“San,” Wooyoung whispers, sitting up. His fingers hook under San’s cannula. “It’s in the way.”

“But… Wooyoung, I can’t breathe without it—”

“Yes, you can,” Wooyoung says. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

His eyes never leave San’s as he removes the thin tube and sets it off to the side with care.

And sure enough, San breathes in.

And out.

No crackles. No hefty weight. No rocks or stone or steel scraping the lining of his lungs. Just clean, fresh air that circulates through him and lifts his body into the sky.

Like he’s flying.

“I can really do anything with you, huh?” San thinks aloud with an incredulous chuckle.

Wooyoung laughs back, pulling San back in for a deep kiss. San’s hands find their way to Wooyoung’s waist, his fingers dipping just below the band of Wooyoung’s jeans, and the fairy moans into his mouth.

“You can do anything,” Wooyoung reiterates with less amusement and more gravity, like the words he’s speaking into the universe are definite. “Anything you want.”

San pulls back for a split second, eyeing Wooyoung carefully. Wooyoung just smiles and winks.

“Oh, so you mean…”

Wooyoung giggles. “What _ do _I mean, I wonder?”

San scoffs and flips them over, his extra oxygen long forgotten as he pins Wooyoung beneath his weight, much like he’d done back in the forest. Wooyoung, apparently winded, lets out an “oof!” and gazes up at him, wide-eyed and panting.

“I love how you find meaning in everything,” Wooyoung says breathlessly, grabbing San’s hand and placing it over his chest, right above his heart.

“Even sexual innuendos?” San tries.

But Wooyoung isn’t smiling suggestively; it’s a genial kind of smile, a _ proud _one. San has only seen a few of those in his lifetime, because he figures it’s hard for people to smile like that around him.

“You see the world for what it is, Choi San,” Wooyoung says. His heart pounds in the palm of San’s hands. His chest rises and falls smoothly like calm ocean ripples.

For a moment, all lewd thoughts of Wooyoung disintegrate from his head. He gazes at Wooyoung, feeling helpless because everything is just _ Wooyoung Wooyoung Wooyoung_, his magic in San’s body, his elegant fingers dancing on his skin, their breaths mingling with one another. San breathes Wooyoung in, cannula-free, because he knows that there are going to be limited moments like these.

Golden moments are scarce, and San knows he will only have so many before his life’s thread is cut.

“You’re here now,” Wooyoung whispers, kissing San’s jaw. “And you have no idea how happy I was when I heard you say that for the first time.”

“Ah yes, because you were so used to my cynicism,” San jokes.

Another kiss. “I could never get used to your cynicism, San. Your cynicism means nothing to me.” Wooyoung lifts his head to meet San’s eyes. “I’d rather get used to your hope.”

San can’t help but smile. Hope, huh?

“Saying that you can do anything, that you’re here, that you’re alive… things like that. Forgetting that you’re ill, even if just for a few moments, to remember that you’re still alive. _ That’s _what I want to get used to. That, and seeing your beautiful face every day.”

San truly laughs at that, pulling Wooyoung in for another playful kiss. When he pulls away, he sighs, and smiles again.

“I suppose I could try,” he murmurs.

Wooyoung pecks the tip of his nose and takes his hand. It’s so warm, like San is holding a piece of the sun.

The more San touches him, the more he starts to think the fairy may actually be some kind of sun-born god. He feels it in every nerve, every pore, every fiber of his being. When Wooyoung rids himself of his shirt, all the moisture in San’s mouth evaporates and he just gawks at the ethereal fairy in front of him, feeling himself paling embarrassingly in comparison.

He crosses his arms over himself and frowns, eyes falling.

“What’s wrong?” Wooyoung asks, hands planted on San’s thin waist.

“I just…” San refuses to meet Wooyoung’s eyes. “It’s not pretty. My body.”

Wooyoung frowns even more deeply than him. “Now why on earth would you think that?”

“Because…” Because why? Because he can’t help his empty appetite? Because he’s had tests performed on him that left permanent scars on his ribcage? Because he can’t control the way his body looks?

Because he’s ill?

All of those answers would be swallowed up by Wooyoung’s raging glow.

Drawing in a deep breath, eyes squeezed shut, San lifts his shirt and drops it somewhere on the ground next to them. When he’s met with no verbal response, he opens his eyes to see Wooyoung’s travel up his body, coming to a halt at his face.

“You really think I care about what your body looks like?” Wooyoung asks rhetorically.

“I’ve never liked it,” San mumbles. “I never really expected anyone else to like it, either.”

Wooyoung scoffs, pulling San in by the back of his neck and kissing the side of it. San sighs, latching onto Wooyoung’s back as he grinds down.

“You should know… that you are beautiful to at least one person,” Wooyoung says. “At every point in your life, there is going to be someone who thinks you’re beautiful, regardless of anything. Do you understand?”

San looks into his eyes again and nods.

“Because I think you’re beautiful, Choi San. At this point in your life, I think you’re beautiful. Do you understand?”

San nods again, vigorously.

“And there are going to be so many more who think the same.” Wooyoung presses his lips to San’s neck, leaving a wet, open-mouthed kiss.

“Oh, _ Wooyoung_—”

Wooyoung lures him back in for another hungry kiss, tongue grazing his bottom lip, asking for entrance. San gladly offers it, parting his lips and letting Wooyoung’s tongue inside to collide with his own. He can’t help the vice grip he has on Wooyoung’s waist; it’s _ so much_, feeling somebody like this. Feeling _ Wooyoung _like this. He holds Wooyoung so tightly that Wooyoung’s skin imprints itself into his fingertips.

San can’t breathe. But this is a kind of breathlessness that he would welcome any day.

❀

In an entanglement of sweaty limbs and shaky breaths, Wooyoung rests his hand on San’s chest, palm up, and conjures a flower.

San watches as the veins in Wooyoung’s bare arm ignite with that familiar soft white glow, the light traveling up to his outstretched palm, flaring out into a deep brown that flourishes into a vibrant purple flower.

“I believe… it’s your favorite color,” Wooyoung says teasingly. “Take it. It’s for you.”

San chuckles, lifting his free hand and plucking the flower from Wooyoung’s palm. “Does it hurt?” he asks.

“It’s kinda like pulling out a splinter,” Wooyoung says. “So no, not really.”

“I dunno about that, splinters can be pretty damn painful.”

“If I were to make an entire tree from my hand, _ then _that would probably hurt. Thankfully I’m not quite there yet.”

“Can fairies really create entire trees?”

Wooyoung shrugs, then giggles. “Maybe, maybe not. Seonghwa and Hongjoong certainly can’t. I’ve seen them try.”

“If fairies could create trees, the world might not have forest crises everywhere.”

“Unfortunately, fairies are not saviors of the Earth, Sannie.” Wooyoung sighs, flipping his hand palm-down on San’s chest. “Fairies aren’t as powerful as you seem to think they are.”

“Well, they’re certainly more powerful than humans.”

“Mm.” Wooyoung’s fingers curl into a loose fist, positioned directly above San’s heart.

_ Just take it, _San thinks, placing his own hand over Wooyoung’s. He intertwines their fingers and looks over.

Wooyoung’s eyes are already closed.

But that’s okay, because San imagines how tired he must be after… that. He’d taken the reins despite not knowing what he was doing either, had San a melted puddle of pliable goo in his hands, guided both of them to the climaxes of their _ lives_, and made San’s heart pound with something other than a lack of oxygen.

San’s eyes follow suit, the darkness beneath his eyes accompanied by that soft white light, blooming into violet.

❀

When San was hospitalized over winter break, his lung functioning was at sixty-five percent, which he considers to be pretty good. His worst was forty-one, when he was sixteen and couldn’t go a day without feeling like he actually _ was _dead. A barely breathing corpse.

The last week of February, he had another spirometry test, to “keep an eye on it,” as his mother put it. It was sixty-one. Not too shabby. His chest hurt after he did it, but not much else.

The last week of March, he has another. He prepares mentally, breathing in, expecting another sixty-something percent result when coughs begin to wrack his body.

The technician, apparently unexpecting, fumbles to get San back on track. San’s chest bursts into flames, the tube he’s supposed to breathe from long forgotten as his throat burns to expel the air stuck in the cracks of his lungs.

There isn’t much he can do but wait it out. So that’s what he does. He takes a few gulps of water once his coughs simmer down, clearing his throat and blinking away the tears in his eyes, sealing his lips around the tube once more.

He shuts his eyes, pouring all of his energy into the breaths he has to take as he snuffs out the coughs that threaten to take him again.

The relief he feels once he’s able to remove the clamp on his nostrils is unparalleled. He lets out a few smaller coughs, sticking his precious cannula back in and taking several, more oxygen-supported breaths.

The results make San’s stomach plummet.

From sixty-one, to forty-nine.

“And that was the highest percentage,” the technician, Somin, tells him. “Has anything changed recently? Have you taken up any smoking, any drugs, any changes in your diet or daily activity?”

San shakes his head. His days pass by like all of his days before. Every today becomes a tomorrow. And nothing changes in between.

“Could just be a flare-up, right?” San suggests.

Somin sighs. “It’s a possibility, yes.”

“But it’s too uncertain,” San finishes for her.

She nods, her face crestfallen. “How often do you normally have flare-ups?”

“Um…”

How should he try to explain that there’s a fairy that keeps his symptoms at bay and therefore he’s had a lot less flare-ups than he used to?

“Once every… few months?” San tries.

“So the last time you had a flare-up was at the beginning of January, which led to your hospitalization.”

“W-well, it wasn’t really anything. I was just having a coughing fit and my mother got really worried and took me to the hospital. I really don’t think it was a _ flare-up_, per se.”

The technician squints, her lips pursed in thought. “Have you been feeling any other symptoms? Aches, loss of appetite, more difficulty breathing than usual, worsening coughs…”

“Well, all that stuff is pretty normal,” San says. “But nothing’s really _ worse_, I guess. M-maybe I could try the test again? See if the results are any different? Could’ve just been bad timing, you know? Darn lungs acting up.” He laughs weakly, punctuating the pathetic joke with a jab at his ribs.

So Somin performs the test again, when San’s breaths have evened out as much as they can. The highest result is fifty-five.

“See! Not too bad. Definitely better than forty-nine,” San says with an attempt at a laugh.

Somin just continues to stare, frowning. “It’s still a decrease from your result in January.”

“But not by much. I’m fine.”

Somin sighs, defeated. “You’ve managed flare-ups before, correct?”

“Yup, rest and breathing exercises, got it.”

“Increase your oxygen intake,” Somin says, glancing at his tank.

“Yup.”

“You have accommodations at school, right? Don’t overdo anything. Take your time, and once you feel better, then you can resume your usual activities.”

“Yup.”

With a dubious look, Somin writes something down on her clipboard. “Take your meds,” she says flatly, turning towards her monitor. “I’m sending a request to refill your prescription now.”

“Mhm.”

Her parting look to San is hesitant and a little sad, but San is used to seeing looks like that. From everybody.

At the pharmacy, he gets another _ look _ from the tech. _ How could someone so young be dying so quickly? _

When he gets back to the dorm, he slams the door behind him, startling a studying Yunho. “What’s up?” he asks, sliding his headphones off, some EDM beat blaring from the speakers.

“A flare-up, apparently,” San mutters, flopping back down on his bed, spirometer in his hand.

“What?” Yunho pauses the music and throws his headphones on his desk, turning his chair in San’s direction. “Dude, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s _ wrong. _I feel fine, I swear. My lung function just decreased a bit, that’s all.”

“You had a spirometry test, I assumed?”

San nods. “I started coughing before the first test, which obviously affected the results. At first it was forty-nine percent, but the tech did it again and I got fifty-five! I had sixty-one percent in January. My lung function changes all the time. It’s really nothing.”

Yunho narrows his eyes, giving him that same look Somin had given him, if not a bit more... hostile. “So… you got your very own take-home spirometer, I see.”

“Mm.” San makes a dramatic display of sticking the tube into his mouth and inhaling. The blue piston inside floats pathetically.

Yunho stares blankly. “That… wasn’t very impressive.”

San coughs, setting the device down beside him. “It’s normal.”

“Haven’t seen you doing that the entire time I’ve known you.”

“It’s annoying,” San says. “Parents made me do it all the time back home.”

“For good reason.” Yunho sounds exasperated. “Maybe you should, I don’t know, start taking this a little more seriously?” Those are his last concerned words, buried under a layer of frustration, before he turns back around and resumes the music.

San turns his head and glares down at the dinky little thing. He’s amassed plenty back home, mere memorabilia of all of his hospital visits tucked away in the corner of his closet. He might as well be a spirometer collector. He had one packed when he moved to the dorms, had some given to him during his checkups… and never used them.

**[San]**

_ hey do u wanna watch me breathe _

_ i swear it’s fun _

**[Wooyoung]**

_ k im omw _

❀

“If you’re breathing in… why is the thingy going up?”

“It’s called a piston. And fuck if I know.”

❀

San feels like he’s under the supreme vigilance of his parents again now that Wooyoung knows about the little device. He makes San bring it with him when he goes over, has San bring it to the oasis when they take trips there, watches the little ball go up when San breathes in despite not knowing the physics of it.

And San is starting to grow frustrated.

He keeps it in because he knows that Wooyoung is doing this out of concern. Because everything everyone does is out of concern for the dying boy. But what’s the point? No matter what, that little blue indicator is going to start floating lower and lower, because San’s lungs are getting shittier and shittier. And as much as Wooyoung makes him feel better, he knows that his lungs are still scarred to no end. His oxygen levels are still atrocious no matter how painless it is to breathe around Wooyoung.

So why is Wooyoung bothering?

It was actually quite cute at first, because Wooyoung watched with rapt attention and wide, curious eyes as the apparatus measured San’s oxygen intake, but it became more of a chore, more of a demand, and San started to feel trapped again.

Trapped within his own walls, running his fingers along every surface, waiting for something to change.

San is slightly dizzy by the time he finishes his fifth exercise of the day. Wooyoung is curled up by his side, watching as he dozes off. San checks the time; it’s only ten thirty.

“Thought fairies don’t need to sleep much,” San murmurs.

Wooyoung stirs, humming. “It’s been a rough week.”

“I don’t blame you, midterms are hell.”

Wooyoung chuckles, then yawns. “You did great today, Sannie. I know you hate your exercises, but… it’s important.”

San sighs as he sets the spirometer down on the nightstand. “I just… don’t really see why. It’s just monitoring my air intake. I’m basically watching my lungs go to shit.”

“You need to exercise your lungs. It really helps to increase, or at least stabilize lung efficiency.”

“You know that?”

“The internet.” San feels Wooyoung grin.

“You really looked it up?”

Wooyoung nods. “Of course I did, Sannie. I looked it up, researched your condition, because there needs to be someone who can take care of you if you won’t take care of yourself.”

San blinks and stares up at the ceiling, finding himself at a loss for words. “When you can’t see a doctor… and feel like your treatments are pointless because you’ll die in the end anyway… there should be someone that makes sure you do them.” Wooyoung yawns again, fingers tangling in the fabric of San’s shirt as San slinks down from his upright position, meeting Wooyoung at face-level.

San gazes into Wooyoung’s eyes, speechless. “And I want to give you as much time as possible, San,” Wooyoung whispers. “I would bend time for you if I could.”

“Don’t say that, Wooyoung,” San pleads quietly, placing his hand over Wooyoung’s.

Wooyoung flattens his palm against San’s chest and inhales. San follows suit.

“I’ll do my treatments and exercises, okay? I will.” San kisses the back of Wooyoung’s hand, as he’s done plenty of times before.

Wooyoung looks up at him with droopy eyes and kisses his knuckles back.

How could San be so frustrated when Wooyoung is just trying his best to extend his time on this planet?

How could San think the breathing exercises are pointless when he knows deep down that they aren’t?

That thread of his life, it’s a fraying tightrope that he’s walking. He’s wearing high heels and a straitjacket and there’s lava bubbling below. The one thing keeping him from stumbling? A force that cannot be seen, defying gravity, defying the laws of nature, pulling his body up from above. And he continues to walk despite all the odds stacked against him.

That time he’s spending above the lava, he needs to cherish it.

There’s only so much heat that line can take before it snaps.

❀

_ 7\. He doesn’t try to give himself more time. If I were him, I would fight until the very end, live as many seconds as I can before I go. But I’m hoping, praying to anything or anyone that will listen, that he finds his own purpose for going on. Not mine. Not Yunho’s or Mingi’s. Not his parents’. _

_ His very own. _

❀

_ “Will I be able to control what kind of flower comes out? Every time I try it’s some random one! I was trying to make a rose and it came out as a daisy.” _

_ “You can make any kind of flower you’d like, Wooyoung. The power develops over time. One day, you will be able to envision the kind of flower you’d like to create and bring it to life.” _

_ “Will I know when?” _

_ “You’ll know it when it happens. It’ll be one of the best surprises of your life.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/galaxysangs) if you don't hate me for writing this lol


	8. rose (red)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just wanna drop a little warning for blood later on in the chapter! hope u enjoy the angst <3

_ “Wooyoung, how many times have I told you to be careful with that power?” _

_ “B-but hyung! It was in pain! It was going to die if I didn’t do something!” _

_ “Wooyoung… that is how nature is. And it is best if we don’t interfere with the process.” _

_ “It’s not fair… it’s not fair! How come we get to live for basically forever but others don’t?” _

_ “That is just how things are, Wooyoung. But I hope you realize that we are not invincible. Things… can kill us too.” _

❀

Wooyoung makes San bring his spirometer to their library dates. The first time Mingi sees him operating the thing, he stares for a solid two minutes.

“So… what does that thing do, exactly?”

“It measures how much air you breathe in and exercises your lungs. Gotta keep the air flowing as much as possible,” Yunho says without looking up from his notes.

“Oh yeah, I forgot you’re in medicine. Smart boy.” Mingi chuckles and pats Yunho on the back. Yunho still doesn’t spare him a glance, eyes laser-focused on his studies.

“Doesn’t really take medical studies to know that,” Wooyoung mutters, just out of earshot. His eyes are glued to San, watching observantly as the blue lingers just below halfway up the indicator. His bottom lip is sucked in; San knows that means he’s nervous.

And for good reason. San’s noticed it too—that indicator just keeps getting lower no matter how many times he “exercises.”

When he exhales, his eyes sting and he shakes his head to dispel the dizziness, shoving the cannula back into his nose.

“Fuck,” he curses quietly, setting the apparatus off to the side and letting out a single cough.

That makes Yunho raise his head. “What’s wrong?”

Both San and Wooyoung look over at him, his eyes riddled with worry. Mingi’s eyes flit between all of them, not knowing where to land.

What should San tell him? That his oxygen intake isn’t improving? That it’s staying stagnant? Lie and say that it’s getting better?

Or tell the truth, and say that it might be getting worse?

“It just hurts when I finish.” San settles for a half-lie, because while it does send his brain spiraling a bit after he’s done, he knows there’s more to it—it’s not _ supposed _to hurt, not that much. But whenever San pulls away from that mouth piece and lets out whatever infinitesimal amount of air he manages to get in, he always coughs, his head pounds, and the world flips and turns like a die in a tornado.

“Is it supposed to?” Mingi asks.

“It can, if he’s not doing it right,” Yunho says, a somewhat biting remark.

“Or, because my lungs are shit and can’t hold that much oxygen and this thing is forcing me to breathe in what I can’t.”

“Dude, you know that’s not how it works—”

“Then tell me how it works, Yunho,” San snaps back. Mingi’s eyes fly wide open. “Tell me what I don’t know about my condition.”

“I’m sure you know plenty about your condition, San-ah. That’s why you completely neglect to take care of yourself, right?”

“Oh fuck _ off_, Yunho!”

“Guys, please stop,” Wooyoung pleads weakly, his fingers wrapping awkwardly around San’s wrist. “Please.”

San scoffs, tearing his wrist away from Wooyoung’s hand, throwing his oxygen tank straps over his shoulders, and storming out of the library. With each footfall, he feels furious lightning bolts shooting up his legs, his lungs brewing up a storm that he expels once the spring air hits him. Burying his face in his elbow, he lets the barrage of coughs out until he feels a pair of hands slam into him.

“San! Please don’t run off like that!” Wooyoung cries. He has San’s spirometer sandwiched between his arm and ribcage.

San’s coughing stops almost instantly. Wooyoung is panting as he spins San back around, eyes frantic and teary. “Please… let’s just go home, okay? Seonghwa-hyung can make you some tea, it’ll help calm you down.”

San really can’t ignore the fragility of Wooyoung’s state. He _ knows _ that him being in Wooyoung’s life must be taking a mental toll, as it is with just about anybody. Wooyoung has been at the forefront of all of San’s frustrations, his triumphs, his snide remarks and cynical jokes. Wooyoung is the one who puts up with his bullshit the most, and when Wooyoung is practically begging him to take a step back, to _ breathe_, how could San deny him?

Swallowing, he nods and lets Wooyoung take his hand and guide him back to his home.

❀

San hated vegetables as a kid, though he had to adapt to them when his mother insisted on cooking “healthy” food for him once he was diagnosed. His disdain for them never abandoned him, but at least he’s learned to eat them without gagging.

Seonghwa and Hongjoong’s, however, San could eat endless amounts of, if he had a normal appetite. He accredits it to the freshness and whatever spices and magic they infuse it with.

His portion is considerably lesser compared to the last time he’d eaten at their house. Seonghwa eyes his platter warily.

“I am sorry to hear about your altercation with your friend,” he says. “But… I imagine it is difficult for him to understand your struggles, just as it is difficult for you to understand why he feels frustrated with you.”

San pokes at his uneaten vegetables with a fork, eyes trained on the rainbow of greens and purples and oranges. It smells good, truly, but his stomach is churning and he feels like he might cry, his throat itching with lingering coughs and unspoken words.

“I just… I _ am _taking care of myself. As best as I can, I guess.” He mumbles that last part, feeling his shoulders shrinking in. “I’m not neglecting to take care of myself. I don’t understand why he thinks that.”

“Unfortunately, I do not know enough about your friendship with this person…”

“Yunho.”

“Ah, yes, Yunho. I do not know him or what he’s seen of you. But think, San, there must be a reason why he thinks that. He would not think that for no reason, hm?”

San glances up just the tiniest bit to see Seonghwa regarding him kindly, chewing idly. “I will make us some tea. Wooyoung, would you accompany me to the apothecary?” He swallows, gracefully wiping his mouth with a pristine white cloth, and motions for Wooyoung to follow him with a nod of his head. San watches, puzzled, as the pair walks off, noticing the tired look in Wooyoung’s eyes.

Hongjoong sighs. “San.”

San turns his attention to Wooyoung’s other guardian. “I’m… really sorry for bringing all this here.”

“Ah, do not apologize for feeling emotions, San.” Hongjoong chuckles lightly. “Your frustrations are valid. But all of that aside, how are you? Have you been drinking the potion?”

San shakes his head. “I’m saving it.”

“Oh? For what?” Hongjoong asks with genuine curiosity, maybe with a hint of confusion.

“If things get really bad. If I have an attack that I can’t stop.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want it to reach that point now, would we?”

“I had one… just one, though. I took two sips. The attack stopped almost instantly.”

Hongjoong smiles, nodding approvingly. “That is the unparalleled power of Seonghwa and I’s most potent concoction.”

“Really? The most potent?”

“Mm. As Seonghwa said, it takes a long time and a lot of magic to make, but it works wonders.”

“I’m… still so honored that you’d share it with me.”

Hongjoong sighs, his smile fading. “I highly suggest you make use of it instead of saving it, however. Magic does not last forever. Much like food or supplements in the human world, it _ is _ perishable, and its effects will lessen over time. It does not expire _ that _quickly, but even so, I would not wait or hesitate to use it.”

“I just… I’m saving it for when it gets bad—”

“I understand your thinking, San. Truly, I do. But magic has its limits. There is only so much that potion can stop.”

_ Then what’s the point of it? _

San lowers his gaze again, head hung in shame. He can’t believe he’s thinking like this in front of the powerful, generous fairy who contributed so much magic to make it, only to share it with someone who isn’t even using it.

Hongjoong sighs again. “Well, San, it is your potion, after all. You decide when you drink it.”

San nods and sets his fork down. “You aren’t hungry?” Hongjoong questions.

“It’s a symptom,” San mumbles.

“You ate less than last time. Is everything okay?”

San shrugs. “I’ve just been having a few flare-ups lately. It’s nothing new.”

“A few? You seemed to be doing quite well when we first met.”

San grimaces internally, imagining his mouth zipping shut as he swallows the words he knows he should say. They hurt more than his chest when he coughs.

The silence gets the message across, however, and Hongjoong acknowledges it with an impassive hum.

“Perhaps a sip of the potion before you go to sleep at night will do you some good,” is the last thing Hongjoong says to him before Seonghwa and Wooyoung return to the dining room. The eldest is holding a fine china teapot, while Wooyoung carries the plates and teacups.

The tea is just hot enough, not scalding but not tepid either. San drinks half the cup straight away, the warmth of the magic-infused liquid making its rounds through his weary bones. It tastes of honey and something woody and floral, with a touch of citrusy tang. San had no clue such a combination of flavors could work so well together.

His nerves are soothed, but his spiraling mind certainly isn’t.

_ I’m sorry for taking up your oxygen. _

_ I’m sorry for wasting your generosity. _

_ I’m sorry sorry sorry. _

It brings him back to when he was first diagnosed, when he apologized profusely to his parents for a disease that nobody could control.

_ For all the money you have to spend on me just to keep me from dying sooner. _

_ For putting up a fight when I had to do my spirometry exercises. _

_ For making jokes that made you feel hopeless instead of cheerful. _

_ Sorry sorry sorry. _

Later that night, when he and Wooyoung have parted ways and he’s lying in bed, Yunho listening to some lo-fi mix to block him out, he stares up at the ceiling as Hongjoong’s potion makes its way through his body and wonders just how far gone he will have to be for fairy magic to be absolutely useless.

❀

San doesn’t go to class the next day. His body is too sluggish, and Yunho has already left for his own classes. There is nobody to reprimand him or interrogate him or berate him.

It’s okay, though. He figures he’s already doing that to himself.

❀

Wooyoung shows up with a blueberry smoothie in one hand and a stemmed, thornless red rose in the other. San has just enough energy to lug himself out of bed and answer the door.

“Figured we could watch a movie or something,” he says, smiling.

They watch the cinematic rendition of _ The Fault in Our Stars _at San’s suggestion, the bright glare of San’s laptop keeping both of them awake through the entirety of it.

“A little infinity,” Wooyoung breathes, further burrowing his head into the crook of San’s neck. He yawns. “I like that.”

“As cheesy as it is… I agree.” San sniffles, smiling at Hazel's teary, unnecessarily profound declaration of love. “Though I feel like high schoolers really don’t speak like that.”

“I wouldn’t know, since I was homeschooled.”

“Well, so was I.”

The two laugh at that.

“It’s kind of amazing, though. What words can do. Be as profound and pretentious as you want. Be as senseless and inane as you want. Somebody will find meaning in what you say.” Wooyoung chuckles, removing his head from its cozy spot and taking San’s chin with two fingers. “You know, Sannie… I don’t want to live forever.”

San frowns. “I mean… I wouldn’t either, but I’d certainly want to live longer than whatever number I’ll inevitably end up with.”

Wooyoung sighs through his nose and kisses him softly, slowly, as if time doesn’t exist and San has as much of it as he wants.

“There is so much beauty in humanity, I think,” Wooyoung murmurs. “So much beauty and tragedy in finite lives. Sometimes… I don’t really think you need an infinity.”

“It’s a good feeling, though. It’s a nice word, too. Infinity. Everlasting. Forever.”

“Mm. But what’s the point of living forever if you don’t _ feel _ like you’re infinite? What’s the point if you’re just hollow because there’s so much that’s _ missing_?”

“Wooyoung…”

“Seonghwa and Hongjoong have each other for life, San. But where will I go when you’re gone? What will I do?”

“Wooyoung, please don’t…”

But Wooyoung’s tears are already falling like perfect raindrops onto a spring.

“I’m not your infinity. I’m _ not_,” San chokes out, his own tears surfacing, spilling over onto his cheeks and cannula. “You get to live as long as you want. I don’t.”

“A life without you would be so empty, Sannie. Do you know how much you carved yourself into my existence?” Wooyoung grabs San by the wrist, his clutch feather-light as he presses San’s palm against his beating heart. He laughs almost spitefully, his heartbeats matching the bumps of his laughter. “I could grow an entire garden for you.”

“Don’t… don’t say that, Wooyoung. I can’t take it.”

But Wooyoung’s words sound familiar, as if his question was once asked by someone else.

_ “What will you do when I’m gone?” _

Neither of them know.

Maybe, if they ask the question enough, the answer will come.

And maybe Choi San could be saved.

But the universe is cruel like that.

❀

_ “Good thing fairies don’t need that much sleep. Sleeping on Yunho’s bed was a nightmare in and of itself.” _

With how quickly Wooyoung falls asleep once the laptop is shut, San never would have guessed.

He takes three sips of Hongjoong’s potion. The bottle is half empty.

❀

When San wakes up, Wooyoung is gone. Presumably off to his morning classes, but San isn’t too sure. Across the room, Yunho is fast asleep under his comforter, snoring softly.

The rose that Wooyoung had brought to him last night is placed next to him, but the crimson of it has faded into a muddy brown, and the petals droop, nearly lifeless.

Much like the lavender rose, it disintegrates when San picks it up, as if Wooyoung hadn’t left a trace.

There’s the cup that once held the blueberry smoothie sitting in the garbage bin. There’s the magic potion given to him by Wooyoung’s guardian. But other than those things, it’s as if Wooyoung was never here.

As if every trace of Wooyoung is just gone.

San rests his hand over his beating heart. It’s nothing like Wooyoung’s.

Because Wooyoung is healthy. Wooyoung isn’t even _ human_; he’s a mystical being who doesn’t age, can live forever, can talk to plants and animals, can use his magic to keep San from drowning yet can’t bend time.

San wishes he could, though, to rewind the tape back to last night so he can feel Wooyoung’s heart in his hand once more.

A heart that truly _ beats_, one that isn’t just there and pumping poorly oxygenated blood to a barely functioning body.

❀

**[Wooyoung]**

_ Hey how are you feeling?? _

_ Sorry i had class and had to leave :/ didn’t wanna wake u up _

**[San]**

_ Eh, still not feeling too hot but it’s ok _

_ I’m doing my class online today _

_ Too tired to move _

**[Wooyoung]**

_ Yeah i feel that :/ i’ve been pretty tired too lately _

_ I’ll stop by later, yeah? Want me to bring anything? _

**[San]**

_ You already know what i want haha _

**[Wooyoung]**

_ A blueberry smoothie, got it _

_ Also, i felt pretty inspired after last night _

_ How should i profess my love for you? _

**[San]**

_ Um… what? _

**[Wooyoung]**

_ Because mark my words, choi san _

_ I will fall in love with you someday _

**[San]**

_ Someday…? _

**[Wooyoung]**

_ Just answer my question _

**[San]**

_ Uh…… i guess a letter would be cool _

_ I’ve always wanted a love letter _

_ Handwritten and everything _

**[Wooyoung]**

_ You got it _

❀

As if those text messages were never written, Wooyoung makes the trek to San’s dorm, knocks on his door, and hands him his beloved blueberry smoothie and a bouquet of red roses.

“So you’re not going to profess your love for me now?” San asks with an arched brow, inhaling what he can of the flowers.

“Not now, no. Because I’m not in love with you yet.” Wooyoung hops onto San’s bed and scoots over, making room for the actual owner of said bed.

“Yet.” San repeats the word, befuddled.

“Yet,” Wooyoung affirms. “Just give me a little more time, okay? I’ll write you a letter and tell you how much I love you. Won’t be as cheesy and profound as it was in that movie we watched, but it’ll be something.”

_ It’ll be something. _

San watches Wooyoung warily for the rest of the night, sparing several side glances while _ The Notebook _serves as mere background noise, a simple soundtrack to the real-life movie San is living, watching with his own two eyes.

“I’ll be seeing you,” says the old man through a blue filter, hand in hand with his longtime lover.

“It would be nice to grow old,” San muses.

“Neither of us get to,” Wooyoung says, barely audible.

San looks over to see Wooyoung gazing up at him from his designated spot in San’s neck, the specks in his eyes rendered blue.

“But… I get to have you in the time you have left,” Wooyoung says, intertwining their fingers and pressing a familiar kiss to the back of San’s hand. He likes doing that a lot, San has noticed. “I get to grow old with you.”

San scoffs, but before he can add anything, Wooyoung continues with, “It all depends on your definition of old. If old is tomorrow, or two weeks from now, or three months from now, or two, four, fifty years from now. I _ will _grow old with you, Choi San.”

“You say that like you can bend time,” San quips, his mouth lifting into a half smile.

“I’ll do whatever I can to live the future I want with you,” Wooyoung whispers. “No matter how near or far that future is.”

A puff of air leaves San’s nostrils in what might be a laugh. Wooyoung is just barely smiling as his eyes slip shut again. When San checks the clock on his laptop, the pixels say it’s 9:32 PM.

❀

“You talk as if we’re gonna get married someday.”

“So what? It could happen.”

“Doesn’t mean it will.”

“But it could. Will you marry me, Choi San?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“See? We’re already bickering like we’re married. I say we tie the knot tomorrow.”

“You haven’t even professed your love for me yet.”

“Oh. Right.”

❀

On a day that San feels well enough to go to class, he waits for Wooyoung to text him the classic _ i’m coming over and i’m bringing you a blueberry smoothie_, but the message never comes.

_ Not coming over today? _San sends.

Half an hour later, there is still no response. San is so worried that he could start biting his nails again. He had to kick the habit after he was diagnosed because he didn’t need another part of him gone.

The sun has already begun to set when San makes the reckless decision to leave the dorm on his own and make his way to Wooyoung’s house. He figures if Wooyoung isn’t coming to him, he will go to Wooyoung. That’s just how it’s supposed to work.

He stops at the top step, his lungs already beginning to struggle. Luckily, he’d prepared in advance, packing Hongjoong’s potion and an extra large bottle of water, and he takes a quick swig of the potion before knocking on the door. The bottle is just a little less than halfway empty.

Seonghwa is the one who opens the door, dressed in a white robe and pink bunny slippers, his black hair pushed back behind a matching pink fuzzy headband. It takes San a lot not to laugh.

“Oh, hello, San. Is there something I can help you with?” Seonghwa peers past him. “Wooyoung isn’t with you?”

“Um… no, he isn’t. He wasn’t responding to my texts, so I came to see if he was here.”

“Oh, no. He went down to the oasis quite a while ago and hasn’t come back yet. I thought that perhaps he’d met up with you.”

San shakes his head. “I was just… worried. S-sorry for bothering you.”

“Ah, don’t be so apologetic, San. If anything, it is reassuring that you worry about him.”

“You know… Wooyoung told me that fairies don’t need a lot of sleep.”

Seonghwa tilts his head curiously. “No, typically not. Some don’t need to sleep at all. Fairies don’t sleep to recover physical energy like humans do. It’s more of a means of recovering magic.”

San’s brows knit together, a frown beginning to form on his face. “Recovering… magic?”

Seonghwa nods, his expression somewhat mimicking San’s as he steps aside. “Would you like to come in?”

Wordlessly, San steps inside the familiar household, its pungent floral aroma flooding his senses instantly. It feels bigger, emptier almost.

“I figured it would be more comfortable to talk inside. So... why do you ask?” Seonghwa inquires.

“Wooyoung has been sleeping a lot, I’ve noticed,” San tells him. “Whenever we’re together, we’ll usually watch a movie and he’ll fall asleep. Sometimes he doesn’t even make it halfway through.”

“That’s… odd.” Seonghwa’s frown deepens, perfectly shaped brows knitting together. “Wooyoung hardly sleeps in his own bed. He’s usually up studying or at the oasis with Yeosang. And you say he’s been falling asleep?”

“Yeah, really early and really easily.”

Seonghwa draws in a deep breath, his frown evening out into an expression that’s borderline frightening. His eyes fall closed as he releases his bated breath, jaw visibly tense. “San… has Wooyoung been using his magic around you?”

“Huh? I mean, sometimes he’ll make a flower for me, but that’s about it.”

“That does not require that much magic energy to warrant sleep,” Seonghwa says. “Has he been… healing you?”

“Um… yes? It’s his natural healing aura.”

Seonghwa raises an eyebrow. “Natural healing aura?”

San’s heart feels like it stops at the hints of suspicion in Seonghwa’s tone.

“W-well, yeah, that’s what he told me. He said that he can bring back small organisms from the dead and that it takes up energy, and…”

_ Wooyoung can bring small organisms back from the dead. _

_ Dead. _

“Is… is that not it?” San asks, his voice akin to a pin dropping onto a glass floor.

“There’s no such thing as a natural healing aura, San,” Seonghwa says, his face and tone solemn. “Fairies have naturally _ soothing _ auras, where people and animals may feel calm around them, but not natural _ healing _ auras. Any amount of healing requires magic and energy.” He takes another deep breath as his eyes flit down to San’s oxygen tank. “_Life _energy.”

“Wh-what does that mean?” San asks in a squeak, his entire body’s worth of muscle squeezing taut inside him. He can feel the dread like jolts of electricity surging through him, his stomach tying in an infinity of knots.

“When a fairy heals or revives something, it requires the fairy’s _ life _energy. Sleeping is a way to recover this type of energy, but when used often or in large amounts, it begins to take a toll on the fairy’s body. Fairies can become comatose if they use this power too much.”

_ Comatose. _

“That is why I’m asking if he’s been healing you. You say that he’s been falling asleep easily, yes? Was it not like that before?”

San shakes his head, his heart running laps in his chest. “N-not at first… he was fine at first, I swear! When we met, it was so easy to breathe around him. He told me it was his natural healing aura, b-but he wouldn’t fall asleep… not as easily as he does now, anyway. What does that mean? What… what is he doing?”

Seonghwa’s solemn expression twists into one that looks like how San’s insides feel.

“He’s using his power to heal you. That much is obvious.”

“But his body produces flowers when he heals things, right? I’ve seen him do it… he stopped one of my coughing attacks and his body made a flower. I _ saw _that happen. But after that one time… all the flowers he made for me were…” San watches Seonghwa’s face remaining unchanged and stops talking.

“I… suppose it is possible for a fairy to suppress that release of energy...” Seonghwa sighs. “Allow me to explain it in full. When a fairy heals something, there is a transfer of life energy from the fairy to the organism. During that transfer, some of the life energy is released, and it takes on the form of a flower. I have never seen that _ not _ happen. However… I suppose that it _ is _ possible to control _ when _that release of energy occurs. It is a possibility he conceals it most of the time when he is around you. And I suspect that the flowers he gives to you when you two are together… are actually the products of him healing you.”

“B-but he doesn’t _ always _give me flowers—“

“That’s what I meant earlier, when I said that it is possible he’s been controlling _ when _his body produces the flower. For all we know, he could wait until after you fall asleep, or do it behind your back and hide whatever flower his body produces.”

San swallows a heavy lump. “S-so… you’re saying that Wooyoung has been using his _ life _energy to…”

“To keep your symptoms at bay, yes,” Seonghwa says, but he doesn’t sound quite finished. If anything, his face grows more and more troubled. “But… for him to be doing it consistently, constantly, _ and _the fact that he is beginning to fall asleep easily and more frequently is leading me to a much more… harrowing conclusion.”

San’s gut begins to gurgle, the lack of food in his stomach jumping around inside him, sending shockwaves up to his heart and lungs, running the air from his tank stale. His heart begins to sink into the acid, all moisture abandoning his mouth as Seonghwa tells him the conclusion that has been on the backburner of San’s mind from the day Yunho had lost it on him.

“I am worried that your condition has worsened, and that it is requiring more of Wooyoung’s energy to keep subdued. When you were here last… Hongjoong and I both noticed you were not eating as much, and that Wooyoung seemed a lot less peppy than usual.” San winces. He remembers that day all too well.

A few flare-ups is what San had told Hongjoong.

But even San knew then that the amount of flare-ups he was having wasn’t normal. It still isn’t.

“There is a balance to everything, San. In order to keep your body functioning properly, or, as properly as it _ can _ function, Wooyoung needs to provide the right amount of life energy needed to sustain that. And if he’s continuously using _ more _of it…”

“Then my body is getting worse,” San finishes for him.

“I… am afraid so.”

“So… Wooyoung is effectively killing himself to keep me alive.” The words are bitter as soon as they leave San’s mouth and he swallows heavily, wishing he could take them back.

But even then, it wouldn’t make a difference. The truth is still the truth, and it’s spelled out right in front of him, clear as day.

“That is quite a harsh way to put it, but… yes.”

San scoffs, a fury unlike any other rising up inside him. “That fucking _ idiot._”

“San—”

San shakes his head firmly. “Wooyoung is hurting himself to keep me alive, when he and I know both very damn well I’m not going to live no matter what he does. So why is he bothering?”

“I cannot answer that, San. You know that.”

Biting his lip, San swings around, his oxygen tank clanging as it slams against the doorway, but it’s not like it matters anymore anyway.

“San, please, wait—”

“If you can’t answer that, then I’m going to ask him myself. Where is he?”

Seonghwa pauses, the internal debate visible on his anxious face. “He’s at the oasis, isn’t he? Sleeping there, I presume,” San says.

Slowly, Seonghwa nods. “It is... a place that can help recover magical energy at a faster rate. I guess that’s why he’s been taking more trips down there lately…”

Suppressing a groan, San turns on his heels, his lungs burning with both a lack of oxygen and fervent anger as he storms off in the direction of the clearing.

Each step is hell against his feet. His head is pounding, blurring his vision, sending more sparks of stinging electricity throughout his body. It’s nothing like the sparks he felt when he lay in bed with Wooyoung, or when Wooyoung’s fingertips roamed his body for the first time, or when Wooyoung kissed him until they both fell asleep. San had been unsuspecting then.

But now, it’s all that fills his mind.

_ Wooyoung has been killing himself to keep San alive. _

He’s seeing red in scarlet flashes rather than soft sanguine hues, the vibrance of those red roses having faded as soon as the petals disappeared between his fingers. And now, it feels as if they had meant nothing at all.

Those flowers had been nothing but byproducts of San’s withering life.

The clearing is vacant when San arrives, and there are still no messages from Wooyoung. That’s fine, though, because San will stay here as long as he has to in order to get his answer. It’s what he deserves after all this time of living a prolonged death. He’ll stand here until his legs give out if that’s what it comes to.

Because in the end, it won’t matter.

Nothing will.

Late spring evening air is much chillier than San remembers it to be. He waits and waits, until the sun is a glowing semicircle cut in half by the horizon, periwinkle clouds dotting the sky, and a fairy emerges from the clearing.

And he stops in his tracks at the sight of Choi San, the dying man with nothing else to lose.

“Wh… Sannie, what are you doing here?”

San swallows, lifting his chin, lip curling. “Why didn’t you tell me you were spending your life energy to keep me alive?”

Wooyoung’s eyes widen, his shoulders noticeably stiffening as the question seeps into his ears.

“I… wh—h-how did you…”

“Seonghwa told me,” San says, biting back a growl. “I went looking for you, because you weren’t responding to my texts. And that’s what Seonghwa told me. That’s why you’ve been sleeping so much. And I bet that you’re fucking _ exhausted_, and you spent all day today at the oasis trying to recover. Am I right?”

San watches the lump in Wooyoung’s throat go up, then down. His gaze falls to the growing grass beneath their feet.

“San… please, just… let me—”

“Explain?” San cuts him off. “What else is there to explain, Wooyoung? You’ve been killing yourself trying to keep a dying man alive. There’s nothing else to it.”

“San, _ please_—” Wooyoung sniffles, his eyes flying back up frantically, glassed over with tears.

_ How did they appear so soon? _

“I’m not… I’m not _ killing _myself to keep you alive. I’ve been healing you. That’s it.”

“That’s _ it_? When are you going to stop lying to me?” San reels in his voice before it can get too loud, before his lungs expel more air than he can afford. “You know what else Seonghwa told me? That my condition is getting _ worse. _And you know that, right? You know that I’m getting worse. It’s why you’ve been sleeping so much. I’m sure you can feel it, when you give your life energy to me.”

Wooyoung breathes in deeply, a few tears slipping past his shut eyes.

“I’m getting worse. Aren’t I? Am I on the brink of death, Wooyoung? Please, tell me about my current life status. I’m sure you know a lot about it,” San bites facetiously, the words like poison dripping through his teeth.

“You’re…” Wooyoung stops himself, shaking his head. “Please, stop, San. I can’t…”

“Can’t _ what_, Wooyoung? Why the hell are you trying to keep me alive when it’s fucking _ pointless_? I’m _ dying_, Wooyoung. No amount of fairy magic can stop that from happening. And you… you sacrificing your own energy to prolong the process?” San scoffs again, shaking his own head in disbelief. “You’re an _ idiot_, Wooyoung.”

“You don’t know _ anything_, San!” Wooyoung exclaims. The tears have multiplied tenfold, snot accumulating under his nostrils. “It’s not pointless, San! It’s _ not_! Stop acting as if everything we do for you is pointless!”

_ We. _

_ Everybody tries hard for the dying. _

Wooyoung, Yunho, Mingi, Seonghwa, Hongjoong, and his very own parents.

Keeping him alive, prolonging the inevitable.

It’s all so pointless.

Because really, what’s the point in filling the rest of San’s time on Earth with tests and needles and spirometers and tank-produced oxygen? 

He would much rather die than live in pain. And he’s certain he isn’t the only one who feels this way.

_ Just let me die, Wooyoung. _

Yet he doesn’t dare say it out loud.

Wooyoung takes a cautious step forward. San takes a step back.

“Don’t,” he warns with an extended arm. “Don’t come near me.”

“San…”

“I don’t want this anymore, Wooyoung.” San sighs, feeling as if his memories with Wooyoung are being stolen from him. What was all of that time? Wooyoung wasting his life away trying to save one on the fringes? San was barely living to begin with. He doesn’t need another barely-living person to worry about. “Stop healing me. I’m done.”

“San, I just… I wanted… more time for you.” Wooyoung hiccups and sniffles, wiping away his tears with his sleeve. A fruitless effort, as more tears replace the ones now stained on his shirt. “I… wanted to spend as much time with you as I possibly could. I _ still _do.”

_ “I’ll do whatever I can to live the future I want with you.” _

San closes his eyes, Wooyoung’s words yanking at his heartstrings until it feels like they could snap. His head is a maelstrom of Wooyoung’s doting words and his very own vitriol, clashing, struggling like the air in his lungs. It hurts. Everything does. From his raging head to his swollen toes, his body fights a battle that neither side can win.

In the end, everything dies with him.

He opens his eyes. “Wooyoung… I’m getting worse. Am I right? Tell me.”

Wooyoung closes his. Though his head hangs low, he nods.

San draws in a pathetic breath. “San, please,” Wooyoung pleads before San can get a word out. “Don’t… don’t go. Please. I-I won’t heal you. Just… stay with me. Please.”

But San is already taking steps backwards. “San…”

The dejection in Wooyoung’s eyes and the desperation in his voice makes San want to stop, but he knows he has to go.

The longer he stays, the more tempting it will be to live.

And the more tempting it will be for Wooyoung to help him accomplish that.

San wants no part of it now.

“Just… go home, Wooyoung,” San says. “Go home, and go to sleep. I know you’re tired. It’s tiring, watching me die. I get it.”

Wooyoung winces, his face caving further in. “I’m not… I’m not mad at you, Wooyoung,” San adds just loud enough to hear.

Because truly, he isn’t.

And he doesn’t want to leave Wooyoung thinking that he is.

But he needs to go, tuck himself under the covers and let time run its course. He needs to live out the rest of his life, however long it may be, without the magic, without the extra help, because that’s how it’s supposed to be.

He was never supposed to meet Wooyoung. Wooyoung was never supposed to heal him. He was supposed to continue on with his life of dying. He was supposed to breathe until his shitty lungs decided it was time to go. And breathing was never supposed to be easy.

His life was not supposed to unfold like this.

His life, or any life, is no fairy tale.

So he figures, he should close the book for good.

❀

On the way back to his dorm, San dumps Hongjoong’s potion onto the ground and watches a trail of flowers sprout and die in the glimmering liquid’s wake.

He licks the rim, savoring the last drop of it before he tosses the bottle in a nearby trash can, disposing of the last shred of fairy magic in his life.

❀

It’s nearly dark by the time San makes it back, the periwinkle clouds now an ominous gray against the blanket of inky blue. Yunho’s little desk lamp is on but there is no Yunho to be seen.

_ “What would you do if you had an episode and nobody was here to help you? What if you can’t catch your breath and you die because I’m gone?” _

San has enough energy in him to climb into bed with a single gulp of water sloshing around in his stomach, smiling to himself, thinking that if that does happen… then he dies.

Nothing else to it.

❀

San wakes up to the heavy dorm door closing. Through the sleepy bleariness, he sees the red numbers on his digital clock reading 9:56. He can’t help but wonder if Wooyoung is asleep now.

“Oh. Hey, San,” Yunho says as if he hadn’t been expecting San to be there.

“Hey.” San clears his throat, managing to sit up, feeling every muscle in his body fighting with his bones. His eyes feel swollen from the tears.

Yunho looks at him with worried eyes. “You don’t look so hot.”

“I am terminally ill,” San says. The words slip out so easily. “But… yeah. Wooyoung and I got into an argument.”

“Oh… shit.” Yunho sits down on his bed, glancing off to the side before his eyes finally make the roundabout back to San. “If you wanna talk about it, I’m all ears.”

San coughs. “You can probably guess what it was about.”

Yunho looks away again, biting his lip, and nods.

San sighs, the air scraping his throat. It’s practically being forced out of him whenever he talks.

“It’s all I’ve ever known, Yunho,” San rasps, clearing his throat again. “This illness… it’s all I am. It’s all I will be until the day I die.”

Yunho lets out a deep breath. “San, you’re not even going to believe me when I tell you that it’s not.”

And unfortunately, Yunho is right.

Because this disease _ is _ all San’s ever known. It’s all he is. His lungs are spreading their damage to the rest of his body, resulting in a barely-functioning boy who can’t even eat or sleep or walk without obstruction. His body is all tank oxygen and pain. One look at him from the outside, that god forsaken tube up his nose and the chubby fingertips and pallid skin and bones, and anyone with eyes could see that he is _ ill. _It’s the first thing people see—not the sun, not someone who finds meaning in everything, not some walking miracle. He is none of those things, and he can’t believe he let Wooyoung make him believe even a fraction of it.

“I can’t make you see that,” Yunho goes on. “Nobody can make you see that but yourself. But it’s as you said, you think this illness is all there is to you. I can tell you right now, it’s not.”

_ ‘You realize there’s a whole human being surrounding those lungs, right?’ _

“You deserve to see yourself in the same light everyone else does, San. If there’s one thing I want for you before you die, that would be it.”

Yunho sighs and stands up. “I’m gonna shower. Don’t die on me.”

San has it in him to laugh, and Yunho does too. It might be the first time Yunho has joked about his impending death despite him saying he couldn’t.

So San slinks back under the covers and wills himself to breathe for now. It’s the least he can do for the only other person at this university who’s been there for him through it all.

❀

“I’m sorry for… y’know, being an asshole,” Yunho says, climbing under his own covers.

San has his back turned, his eyes closed but ears open. He isn’t sure if Yunho thinks he’s asleep or not.

“We just… we want to see you live, San. You’ve done nothing but good for us, and we want all the good for you. It’s frustrating, seeing you act like your illness is all that encompasses you. But… under the surface, behind your cannula and shitty lungs, you have an entire personality. There’s your illness, and then there’s _ you. _ And it’s _ you _that we want to see live, no matter what.” 

He sighs. San opens his mouth, but closes it just as quickly, should more senseless, infuriating words escape him.

“You’re a trooper, fighting for this long,” Yunho says with a sniffle. “You are stronger than you will ever know.”

San hears the shuffling of fabric as Yunho sinks deeper under the covers, and then there’s a little click as he switches off the light.

The breaths that San is trying to take in are feeble and just barely make it through him. But his heart is still beating, and he’s still here, still fighting, still alive.

_ I’m sorry, _San wants to say. But right now doesn’t feel quite right.

He closes his eyes again, sleep washing over him for the Nth time, a blend of voices that all belong to him saying _ I’m sorry _pulling him under more than any anesthesia ever could.

❀

_ 8\. He thinks everything is pointless because he’s going to die in the end. _

_ But don’t all humans die in the end? Is everything pointless to them? _

_ We aren’t helping him because we pity him or because we feel guilty that he’s dying and we aren’t. We’re helping him because we want to, because we want to keep the sunshine in our lives for as long as we can. _

_ It’s what we do with our time alive that defines who we are. Not the amount of time we have left, or our ailments, or our faults and flaws. _

_ And I want him to see everything that he is, not just his illness, before he goes. _

❀

San doesn’t know how long he stays in bed for, sipping water and nibbling away at food Yunho steals for him from the dining hall. At most, he can get maybe three bites down before he hands the plate back and Yunho finishes whatever he doesn’t eat.

“San… I really think you should see somebody.” Yunho says one evening. “You haven’t left your bed in almost two days. Can you at least… shower or something?”

The question makes San’s heart sink.

“Can you get up?” Yunho asks.

San clears his throat, swallowing as he uses whatever energy he has to sit up and swing his legs over his bed. Yunho is standing watch, right by San’s side in case something happens.

“Do you need my help?”

Normally, San would give him a defiant no. But his limbs feel weak; his toes are tingling and everything feels _ numb _and he can feel it already—if he stands up on his own, he will fall.

He holds out his arm. Yunho readily takes it.

Gathering San’s toiletries in his shower caddy with one hand, he holds San steady with the other and tugs gently, ushering San to follow. The tank trails behind them slowly as San inches his way across the room, hobbling like he’s just aged a century. God knows he feels like he has.

“Are you okay?” Yunho asks.

“Yeah,” San answers. He isn’t, not really, but at least he _ can _walk with a little help. He should be fine in the shower.

Yunho guides him to the biggest stall, helping him out of his clothes. He waits outside, handing San whatever he needs when he needs it.

Standing under the steady stream of warm water is a lot more fulfilling than San thought. But then again, his body felt like it couldn’t move for a day and a half.

He coughs weakly as he turns the faucet off, and Yunho hands him his towel. With a cleaner mouth and body, San feels the slightest bit refreshed, but his body still feels like a stick wobbling in heavy winds.

One wrong move and he could fall over and his lungs could collapse.

He walks a bit faster on the way back, but as soon as he sits back down on the bed, another cough wracks him, stronger this time. It punches its way out of him, knocking him square in his chest, his heart thudding in his ears.

And several more follow.

“San…” He can just barely hear San over the roaring waters in his ears.

Through the coughs, San manages to raise his arm in the direction of the nightstand, pointing his finger at the box of tissues sitting behind the alarm clock.

He can feel it rising.

Yunho shoves a few into his hand and watches, watches as San squeezes the rest of the coughs out his body and spits into the tissues.

“Fuck,” San wheezes, glancing down at the disgusting translucent fluid staining the once perfect white tissue. “That rarely happens.”

“It’s… not supposed to happen, right?” Yunho questions, terrified.

“It’s happened before.” San’s voice is barely there. “Rare, but it happens.”

“San—”

“It’s fine.” San angrily crumples the wad of tissues into a ball and tosses it in the direction of the garbage can, just missing by a narrow margin. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“San, seriously, I really think you should go—”

“I’m _ fine_, Yunho.” The word ‘fine’ gets stuck, and it breaks when it manages to get out.

Yunho lets out a defeated sigh, clicking his tongue. “You know… I haven’t gone to class.”

“What?”

“I didn’t go to class yesterday, or today. And I won’t go tomorrow.”

San stares up at him incredulously. “Why?”

“Because!” Yunho gestures at him. “Look at you, San! You can barely move, and you just coughed up some pretty nasty sputum, which sure as hell isn’t normal! I’m not going to class until you get the help you need!”

“You’re…”

_ An idiot? _

San’s eyes screw shut at the sour memory bubbling up in his brain.

And then, more coughs bubbling up inside his chest.

His fingers scramble for purchase on something, settling for the edge of the bed, squeezing until his knuckles go white.

“Fucking shit,” he hears Yunho mutter, and there’s the sound of tissues being pulled from the box.

San crosses his arms over his stomach as more and more coughs pummel his insides, leaving him seeing multicolored dots beneath his tightly-shut eyelids. He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, there’s no oxygen getting into his lungs, it’s all being forced out of him, _ he can’t breathe_—

His ears ring with the world’s worst song. White noise, filling his space. He feels something being pressed against his lips, his mouth filling with moisture as he spits up whatever is being ejected from his lungs.

Large hands circle his back, rubbing it, coaxing the coughs out of him.

Through tear-filled eyes, he blinks, absorbing the world as it comes back to him.

He glances down at the tissue.

“Holy fuck,” Yunho mumbles. “San, this isn’t funny anymore.”

There, in the center of the tissue, is a spatter of sputum tinted pink with red specks.

“That’s it, I’m calling emergency services,” Yunho grumbles, grabbing and shoving more clean tissues into San’s hands before standing up abruptly and snatching his phone from his bed.

San can only watch the fuzzy word bend and swirl, a few key words breaking past the warbling barrier.

“Yes… roommate with IPF… he just coughed up blood… _ hey_! Hey, _ San_!”

San blinks, eyelids fluttering as Yunho’s voice drowns in the rippling pool of his senses. He’s weak, _ so weak_, his vision splotched with red just like the tissues…

_ “San, hey, stay with me, San! Don’t you fall asleep on me!” _

Fall asleep… _ is this how Wooyoung felt? _

San swallows, or tries to, a tattered breath wiggling its way into his throat before inevitably getting caught in the scars of his lungs.

And it doesn’t come out.

_ “San! Come on, San! Stay with me!” _

San tries, he really does. The voice calling out to him, he tries to latch onto it, tries to hold onto the last bit of the world he can. He feels something slip over his face, waves of the ocean crashing into him.

_ “Hold on, San. Please. You have to hold on.” _

San’s eyes close, his world engulfed in black and red as he wraps his fingers around the last piece of the corporeal world he can touch before he feels himself drifting out of it.

Whatever he’s touching, it feels warm, like the sun.

❀

_ “What are some things that can kill us, hyung?” _

_ “Why on earth would you want to know that?” _

_ “Just in case. I need to know what to stay away from.” _

_ “Oh, Wooyoung. Like I said, fairies aren’t invincible. Weapons can kill us. Violence. War. Things of the like. But… a lot of the things that can kill us, we can’t see. And it’s hard to stay away from things that we can’t see. So be cautious, Wooyoung. Your life is a treasure.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hides*
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/galaxysangs)


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